Audit quality climate in African supreme audit institutions

Abstract

This study aims to explore how employees of English-speaking African Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) perceive the audit quality (AQ) climate in their organisations. Using Exploratory Structural Equation Modelling, an existing AQ climate questionnaire was shortened, refined and pilot-tested. It was then used as the research instrument for the main study survey among 13 SAIs across three African regions. A cluster analysis was conducted to provide a more nuanced view of data patterns across the African regions and SAI quality management maturity levels in this study. Using the lens of institutional logics, this study reveals SAIs as sites of institutional complexity in Africa. Relatively positive perceptions of the AQ dimensions in African SAIs (despite contextual constraint) suggest that a bureaucratic logic dominates. Procedural and symbolic compliance prevails over substantive quality management, as transformative AQ management principles are layered onto established bureaucratic practices. Managerial logic interacts with SAIs’ human capacity and digital competence constraints, and governance logic interacts with SAIs’ policies and procedures. Perceptions of AQ dimensions differed according to employees’ positional embeddedness (experience and job level), which was attributed to logic enactment and prioritisation. This study’s focus on the revised International Standard for Supreme Audit Institutions, ISSAI 140 (Quality Management for SAIs) advances public sector audit literature with conceptualisation of AQ through an institutional logic lens, the introduction of an SAI AQ climate measure and empirical examination thereof in a comparative study and insights into the translation of AQ management practices into everyday audit work through an employee perspective.