Factors Influencing Recruitment of Non-Accounting Business Professionals into Internal Auditing

This paper examines factors affecting non-accounting business professionals' willingness to work in internal auditing. In a 2 x 6 experiment with 502 participants from across the country, we find that, in contrast to prior research examining accountants, business professionals have relatively favorable views of internal audit. Although they hold favorable views, participants were still less likely to apply for a position labeled as internal audit than an identical position with an alternate label. Varying the structure of internal audit, including job responsibilities, career path, and sourcing arrangement, did not affect participants' willingness to apply for an internal audit position. We also find that high academically performing participants are less likely to apply to work in internal audit. Finally, based on an additional survey of 46 business students, we find that lower academically performing students would be more interested in internal audit if it paid more, but higher academically performing students would be more interested if internal audit performed more interesting work, was in a preferred company/field, or if they had more understanding of the profession