Investigating the Moderating Role of Managers’ Narcissism in Explaining the Relationship between the Internal Auditor’s Competence and the Possibility of the Disclosure of Internal Control Weakness

The purpose of this study was to investigate the moderating role of managers' narcissism in explaining the relationship between internal auditor competence and the possibility of exposing the weakness of internal control.

The current research is applicable in terms of purpose, descriptive- analytical in terms of inference method and in terms of the overall research plan is events/retrospective. In the present study, the collected data of 144 companies during the years 2012 to 2018 have been analyzed through logit regression and stata software.

The professional competence, experience and the level of education of the internal auditor are the features of the internal auditor’s competence that have been studied in this research. Furthermore, the financial leverage, asset returns, sales growth, board size, duality of duties of the CEO, major auditing firm, the company’s activities life, company size, profit and loss index, operating cash flow and inventory ratio, as control variables have entered the research model.

After ensuring the acceptable fit of the measurement and structural patterns of the research, the results of the hypothesis test using Logit panel regression method with random effects indicates that managers’ narcissism positively moderates the relationship between internal auditors’ professional competence and the possibility of disclosure of the weakness of internal control, the work experience of internal auditors and the possibility of the disclosure of internal control weakness, but it has no effect on the relationship between the level of education of internal auditors and the possibility of the disclosure of the internal control weakness.

Contribution: 

The almost uncovered area of research, which is related to internal control inefficiencies, examines and the filling of vacuum in the theory of accounting helps to discover the effects of traits and internal audit characteristics on access to related goals with the impact of narcissism.