Towards an augmented audit service
Licentiate thesis, 2019
The three appended papers contribute to the purpose of this thesis by bringing forward examples of how an organisation can operationalise practices for business-relevant audits, but they also point towards possible challenges in the audit process. By abandoning the cyclic audit programme and instead align the audit programme to an organisation’s strategies and risks, a more business relevant audit programme can be established. Furthermore, introducing an audit sponsor for each individual audit establishes a closer connection with management. This practice also enhances customer (auditee) participation, which is a central component in a service logic. However, this closer participation from management may jeopardise auditor independence, which is one of the principles of auditing. Findings also indicate that ISO knowledge is more of a qualifying factor, which means that ISO compliance can be argued to be a primary responsibility for the audit provider, and a resource that the audit provider contributes in the audit process. Further, auditors apply requirements in the management system standard, such as requirements for process control across various types of processes, even though they were characterised as explorative. This indicates that there might be a challenge for auditors in moving between exploitative and explorative processes, which could be a result of auditors lacking organisational knowledge and context-related skills. However, the findings show that this can be mitigated by spending more time in the preparation phase of the audit and by adding experts to the audit team. Finally, implementing new report designs and shortening the time from the closing meeting until delivery of the audit report increases the accessibility of the audit services.
internal audits
quality management
exploitation
management system
external audits
ISO
co-creation
exploration
service logic
process management
Author
Jan Lenning
Chalmers, Technology Management and Economics, Service Management and Logistics
Making internal audits business-relevant
Total Quality Management and Business Excellence,;Vol. 28(2017)p. 1106-1121
Journal article
Auditing of explorative processes
Total Quality Management and Business Excellence,;Vol. 29(2018)p. 1185-1199
Journal article
Areas of Advance
Production
Subject Categories
Reliability and Maintenance
Publisher
Chalmers
Avenyn 3363, Vasa
Opponent: Bonnie Poksinska , Associate Professor at the Division of Logistics and Quality Management, Linköping University, Sweden