Corporate Governance on the Performance of Internal Auditors in Thailand Public Limited Company

Abstract

The issue of performance of internal auditors is important since Thailand was also affected by the accounting scandals. The expanded scope in the definition of internal auditing and new regulatory requirements such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002 has increased the demands on internal auditing. This study was conducted to examine the relationship between the corporate governance on the performance of internal auditors in Thailand public limited companies. In this study, corporate governance relates to the board of directors size and audit committee size to the performance of the internal auditor. To achieve this objective, two hypotheses were developed based on previous studies and the agency theory. Survey questionnaires were sent to the Chief Audit Executives (CAEs) to determine the effectiveness on their performance based on the professional standards issued by the IPPF (2017) indicators. A total of 520 questionnaires were distributed, but only 146 were usable. Multiple regressions were used to test the relationship between the variables. The result showed that there is insignificant relationship between board of director’s size and internal auditors’ performance. This study however found that audit committee size has a positive relationship on the performance of internal auditors. Therefore, audit committee need to increase higher responsibility with regard to corporate governance by overseeing financial reporting and internal control matters.