Determinants of adoption of computer-assisted audit tools and techniques among internal audit units in Ghana

Abstract

This study investigates the determinants of adoption of computer-assisted audit tools and techniques (CAATTs) among internal audit units in Ghana. Data for the study was drawn from a sample of 75 private and state-owned enterprises through questionnaires while the partial least squares structural equation modeling was employed to analyze and test the hypotheses. The findings indicate that albeit CAATT adoption within internal audit units is fairly high, the actual usage in the areas of risk assessment, fraud detection, substantive testing, and analytical procedures are still low. Using the extended technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework, results show that CAATT behavioral intention is driven by technological readiness, organizational readiness, and environmental readiness but not personal innovativeness. In addition, CAATT behavioral intention influences CAATT adoption among the internal audit units. The findings provide valuable insights to management, heads of audit units, policymakers, and regulators on ways to improve the adoption and use of CAATT. Firms should invest more in training workshops on big data analytics, hiring more data scientists or data engineers, and equipping internal audit units with the information technology infrastructure. The paper complements prior research by applying a hierarchical component modeling technique to the extended TOE framework to investigate CAATT adoption in internal audits.