EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Reconstructing legitimacy of internal auditing during ERP implementations: two contrasting cases

Hany Elbardan, Donald Nordberg and Vikash Kumar Sinha

Journal of Accounting Literature, 2023, vol. 47, issue 5, 184-210

Abstract: Purpose - This study aims to examine how the legitimacy of internal auditing is reconstructed during enterprise resource planning (ERP)-driven technological change. Design/methodology/approach - The study is based on the comparative analysis of internal auditing and its transformation due to ERP implementations at two case firms operating in the food sector in Egypt – one a major Egyptian multinational corporation (MNC) and the other a major domestic company (DC). Findings - Internal auditors (IAs) at MNC saw ERP implementation as an opportunity to reconstruct the legitimacy of internal auditing work by engaging and partnering with actors involved with the ERP change. In doing so, the IAs acquired system certifications and provided line functions and external auditors with data-driven business insights. The “practical coping mechanism” adopted by the IAs led to the acceptance (and legitimacy) of their work. In contrast, IAs at DC adopted a purposeful strategy of disengaging, blaming and rejecting since they were skeptical of the top management team's (TMT's) sincerity. The “disinterestedness” led to the loss of legitimacy in the eyes of the stakeholders. Originality/value - The article offers two contributions. First, it extends the literature by highlighting a spectrum of behavior displayed by IAs (coping with impending issues vs strategic purposefulness) during ERP-driven technological change. Second, the article contributes to the literature on legitimacy by highlighting four intertwined micro-processes – participating, socializing, learning and role-forging – that contribute to reconstructing the legitimacy of internal auditing.

Keywords: Legitimacy; Internal auditing; ERP; Technological change; Case study; M15; M42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:jalpps:jal-01-2023-0001

DOI: 10.1108/JAL-01-2023-0001

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Accounting Literature is currently edited by Professor Martina Linnenluecke and Professor Tom Smith

More articles in Journal of Accounting Literature from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().

 
Page updated 2025-05-31
Handle: RePEc:eme:jalpps:jal-01-2023-0001