| Summary: | The Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) was established to organise the profession. The IIA provides members with an International Professional Practices Framework (IPPF) to lead their professional practice and confirm the highest-quality internal audit effects in various environments. One of the IPPF components is the International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing (the Standards). The goals of the Standards are to describe essential principles that characterise the practice of internal auditing, to deliver a framework for performing and promoting a wide range of value-added internal auditing, to create the basis for the assessment of internal audit performance, and to foster development of organizational processes and operations. However, some researchers have reported many factors related to the lack of compliance with the Standards, related directly to the fieldwork of the profession, which can be controlled by the board of directors, executives or audit committee either in the short or long term. This study however, is premised on the assumption that solving the internal factors (for instance, internal auditors' educational level (college degree), professional certificates, Certificate of Internal Auditors (CIA), membership of organisation and age of internal audit staff) related directly to the organization or its resources is not the ultimate solution to compliance with the International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing Standards. This is because, if a particular organisation tries to adopt a certain strategy to eliminate negative effects associated with internal factors, there are complicated external environmental factors that may not be controllable. For this reason, this study examines foreignness (social capital) as a major factor that affects internal auditors' compliance with the Standards from an environmental perspective, which is one of the main significant contributions of this study. The study examines compliance with International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing in relation to various cultural factors, such as personal, friendship, and family relationships, which are especially salient in developing, Arab, and Gulf countries. Moreover, another contribution of this study is to examine compliance with the standards from a linguistic prospective. Many countries may recognize and use English as an official language and have no trouble in the basic comprehension of the standards, but meaning may not be completely and accurately conveyed in the nuances of the language, which are unique to different cultural settings. For this reason, the study assumes that language will play a critical role with regard to understanding and consequently complying with the standards. In non-English speaking countries, the IIA has tried to solve this issue by translating the standards into the host country language. Therefore, the study also examines compliance with the International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing in terms of two main linguistic factors, Understanding and Translation. A questionnaire strategy was used to collect quantitative data. The companies listed on the Saudi Stock Exchange Market, selected from different sectors in order to have a diversity of responses from many industries. The results showed that there is an influence of social capital (personal social capital, friendship social capital, and family social capital) on the compliance with the International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing (Independence and Objectivity, Individual Objectivity, and Governance). The findings also showed that there is an effect of Linguistic Social Capital (Understanding, and Translation) on compliance with the International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing with regard to professional terms such as Add Value and Residual Risk.
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