Corporate citizen internal audit model: evidence from environmental functions Iran

Purpose In recent years, Corporate Citizenship has continued to grow in importance and significance. It has been the subject of considerable debate and commentary among researchers, corporate leaders and public institutions like NGOs and even capital market companies. The development of this concept in internal audit functions can improve the level of responsibility of companies. The purpose of this study is to design an internal audit model of a corporate citizen in Iranian capital market companies. Design/methodology/approach This research is methodologically in the category of developmental and combined research. In this study, two meta-synthesis and Delphi analyzes in the qualitative part and systematic representation analysis were used to determine the systematic relationships of the Internal Audit Corporate Citizen Components to strengthen environmental sustainability. Because of the mix of the data collection method in both qualitative and quantitative parts, the research participants in the qualitative part were 13 university experts in the field of accounting and 19 internal auditors of Iranian capital market companies who had specialized experience participated in the quantitative part. Findings The results in the qualitative section indicate the existence of 14 confirmed studies and the determination of 8 main components of the internal audit of the corporate citizen, during two stages of Delphi analysis, the level of reliability of the components was confirmed with the concept of internal audit of the corporate citizen. Based on the results of system representation model in quantitative part, it was determined that Environmental training to human resources is the primary stimulus for the system’s internal audit system representation to monitor the financial performance of the company to achieve environmental sustainability. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to exemplify environmental sustainability by focusing on the concept of corporate citizen internal auditing. An area that, although of research importance in terms of developing theoretical literature and practical basis in reducing the financial reporting gap with an independent auditor, However, less research has been done on this issue and conducting this research and expanding it to the level of internal auditing profession can enhance the institutional and educational capacities on it at the international level and help to integrate the development of theoretical literature.