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Increased globalization and cross border trade suggest the importance of consistency in internal controls and the internal auditing activities within organizations when doing business with a region's neighbors. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether there are differences in the demographics of internal auditors in the neighboring regions of the USA, Canada, and many Latin American countries, their organizations' compliance with the Institute of Internal Auditors' (IIA) International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing (Standards), and the skills and competencies that are most important to perform the profession of internal auditing.

Data were selected from the IIA's 2006 Common Body of Knowledge database created by the Institute of Internal Auditors Research Foundation. χ²‐tests or F‐tests were used to determine if there were differences in the responses between internal auditors from the US, Canadian and Latin American respondents.

Although there is less compliance and greater satisfaction with the Standards in participating Latin American countries, the findings indicate remarkable consistency in the USA, Canada, and Latin American countries in their application and compliance with the Standards and the kinds of skills and competencies respondents indicate are important for the practice of internal auditing. Global competition, increased communication and global stakeholder expectations have resulted in increased utilization of internal auditing in the Americas.

Reliability of organizational systems, output and performance must be continually evaluated to ensure effectiveness, efficiency and compliance with entity policies and procedures. One role of the internal auditor is to evaluate this performance using globally accepted Standards, frameworks and procedures. Adding value by making suggestions for system improvements and to provide assurance on the adequacy of system controls to stakeholders at all levels and geographical locations should insure the future of the internal auditing profession.

There has been nothing written about the comparison of the internal auditing profession's usage of the IIA Standards in the USA, Canada, and Latin America. As many organizations are doing business across these borders, reliance on the information provided by their suppliers and customers is important to executives. Systems that are monitored by internal auditors who follow the IIA's Standards should provide more assurance about the reliability of that information. This paper compares the usage of the IIA's Standards by internal auditors in the USA, Canada, and participating Latin American countries.

The purpose of this paper is to quantify how mobile app usage relates to the unique characteristics of behavioral orientations and content types, focussing on the interrelationship among content usage in the context of in-app purchase.

Using a large-scale data set of individual content usage in a particular music mobile app, the author builds a simultaneous equation panel data model to examine dynamic interdependent usage of mobile app.

The paper finds a positive temporal effect of self-oriented content usage (download) on other-oriented content usage (gift), based on behavioral orientation, and also a temporal interdependence between external (ringtone) and internal usage (mp3) based on types of content. The paper also finds that the fourth generation communications standard increases content usage in this mobile app.

These findings provide useful insights for mobile app developers, mobile network operators, content providers, and mobile device manufacturers.

This paper is one of the first to consider and empirically test the interrelationship between various kinds of content usage in music apps.

Ensuring effective usage of Web 2.0 within government organisations is not as straightforward as it seems. The organisations should be aware of a number of issues when implementing Web 2.0 internally. This paper introduces a theoretical model that highlights the importance of management, technology and people issues influencing the level of Web 2.0 usage from an internal perspective. The purpose of this paper was to identify and explore these issues in a government context.

This paper uses a mixed-method (qualitative and quantitative) analysis to identify the issues that should be focused on for achieving effective usage of Web 2.0 among government employees. A combination of interviews, surveys and usage data collected from two government organisations was used to gather the data.

The main finding is that, a policy will act as an initial catalyst for culture change and effective usage of Web 2.0 technologies in a government environment. It was also found that it is important to develop an understanding among senior management about the motivation for their employees to utilise Web 2.0 internally. As a result, the proposed theoretical model could assist government organisations in developing effective adoption approaches through identifying their employees’ motivation to adopt Web 2.0 technologies and developing a suitable organisational social media policy.

There is the issue of the small number of both qualitative and quantitative respondents within the research. Such limitation is because the research relies solely on the voluntary participation of the employees. This limitation was coupled with the fact that both organisations had different security requirements that had affected the amount and level of feasible information that was accessible to the researchers.

This paper extends the understanding of issues applicable to the adoption of Web 2.0 tools from a government organisations’ perspective. The developed theoretical model acts as an adoption guide for organisations to achieve effective Web2.0 tools usage. At the same time, this paper also examines related motivation aspects which higher management should consider while using a new social media or Web 2.0 platform internally.

This paper highlights suitable overview approaches for organisations to consider in increasing adoption of Web 2.0 among their employees. This paper also provides an initial foray into identifying other complex issues that may exist within different government organisations in relation to internal technology usage.

The aim of this paper is to propose a novel evaluation framework to explore the “root causes” that hinder the acceptance of using internal cloud services in a university.

The proposed evaluation framework incorporates the duo‐theme DEMATEL (decision making trial and evaluation laboratory) with TAM (technology acceptance model). The operational procedures were proposed and tested on a university during the post‐implementation phase after introducing the internal cloud services.

According to the results, clear understanding and operational ease under the theme perceived ease of use (PEOU) are more imperative; whereas improved usefulness and productivity under the theme perceived usefulness (PU) are more urgent to foster the usage of internal clouds in the case university.

Based on the findings, some intervention activities were suggested to enhance the level of users' acceptance of internal cloud solutions in the case university. However, the results should not be generalized to apply to other educational establishments.

To reduce the resistance from using internal clouds, some necessary intervention activities such as developing attractive training programs, creating interesting workshops, and rewriting user friendly manual or handbook are recommended.

The novel two‐theme DEMATEL has greatly contributed to the conventional one‐theme DEMATEL theory. The proposed two‐theme DEMATEL procedures were the first attempt to evaluate the acceptance of using internal clouds in university. The results have provided manifest root‐causes under two distinct themes, which help derive effectual intervention activities to foster the acceptance of usage of internal clouds in a university.

This paper details a longitudinal study into the e‐mail habits of first year students at Charles Sturt University. This study is part of ongoing research investigating the factors and barriers that can influence the successfully adoption of technology into the learning environment. The findings from this study illustrate that e‐mail applications are very popular in terms of both useage as well as the high level of confidence that students exhibit. The survey identified two main areas that need to be addressed, namely the disadvantage of rural students in accessing e‐mail and second that male students tend not to be as frequent users of e‐mail compared to their female counterparts.

Examines the associations between ten integrated quality management constructs and the resulting product quality. Analyzes responses from plant managers of 449 auto‐parts firms using stepwise regression. Notes three primary predictors (customer focus, empowerment, and supplier quality management) explaining 26 per cent of variation in product quality. Examines the role of top management commitment in TQM implementation by splitting the sample into firms with high and low top management commitment based on the mean score on this construct. Concludes, first, that firms with high top management commitment produce high quality products despite variations in individual constructs, and, second, that in firms with low top management commitment, four other constructs, i.e. customer focus, supplier quality management, empowerment, and internal quality information usage are primary predictors of product quality.

This research paper aims to examine the relationships among the factors associated with changing shopping environment, consumer knowledge and reference price.

A self administered online survey was used to collect data (final sample size was 265). After checking for non‐response bias, data was factor analyzed and checked for reliability and validity. Hypotheses were tested using structural Equation Modeling procedure.

Product search opportunity is associated with product and price knowledge. Price volatility is negatively associated with internal reference price. Further, consumers' price comparison propensity and price knowledge positively influence external reference price. Finally, price volatility has a significant negative influence on consumer knowledge and IRP orientation.

The sampling frame is a major limitation, in addition to not including variables such as product type and other measures of price volatility. Future research should expand the sampling frame and include other variables as well as other aspects of price volatility.

These findings provide insights into advertised price claims in the information rich internet age. Managers also benefit from the finding that the internet, particularly price comparison, influences external reference price. Consequently, managers must be cautious with their advertised price claims and not exaggerate the value of offerings or cost savings too much.

This topic is important because retailers extensively use reference price or price comparison to increase consumers' perception of the product value. However, not much research attention has been given to this topic.

The objective of this paper is to develop and describe a construct of the “ethos of the codes of ethics” (i.e. an ECE construct) in the private and public sectors of Sweden.

The paper takes a cross‐sector approach to codes of ethics amongst the top private sector companies and the top public sector organisations. The paper then examines the measures put in place by the dual sample in order to describe the ethos of their codes of ethics.

The multivariate techniques used in the statistical analysis indicated that the ECE‐construct consists of five dimensions: ethical bodies, ethical tools, ethical support procedures, internal ethics usage, and external ethics usage.

It should be noted that the ECE construct has been derived from large companies and organisations in private and public Sweden, which may indicate less applicability to smaller operations. Another limitation may be the validity and reliability across other cultural samples. The dual sample contains a variety of different types of operations, but it may not be transferable to other countries.

The outcome is based on data from private companies and public organisations that indicated they had corporate codes of ethics. Therefore, a suggestion for further research is to examine the ECE construct in other countries/cultures that differ from the ones in this research effort performed in the private and public sectors of Sweden.

The ECE construct introduced makes a contribution to theory and practice in the field as it is based upon a dual sample. It makes a contribution to theory as it outlines a construct for the benefit of other researchers working in both the private and the public sectors. The authors also believe that it may be of managerial interest as it provides a grounded framework of areas to be considered in the implementation of the codes of ethics in both private companies and public organisations.

The purpose of the paper is to describe and compare similarities as well as differences in the organizational engagement with ethics between private sector companies and public sector entities.

A survey was conducted in order to examine the organizational engagement with ethics in the largest private sector companies and the largest public sector entities in Sweden. Two adapted questionnaires were developed for each sector. The outcome of this research procedure is reported in this paper.

There are both minor and major differences between the private sector and public sectors, where the private sector companies overall tend to be more engaged with ethics than the public sector entities in areas such as: ethical bodies, ethical tools, internal and external ethical usage, and ethical support measures and ethical performance measures.

This paper makes a contribution to theory as it outlines findings for the benefit of other researchers working in private and/or public sectors in the field. A suggestion for further research is to examine the organizational engagement with ethics in other countries/cultures that differ from the ones in this research effort performed in the private and public sectors of Sweden.

The research may be of managerial interest as it provides a grounded framework of areas to be considered in the examination of organizational engagement with ethics in both private sector companies and public sector entities. It may be used as a benchmark by either sector.

It reports a research effort to develop and describe a cross‐sector comparison of the organizational engagement with ethics between private sector companies and public sector entities of Sweden. A framework is also introduced and illustrated. It also makes a contribution to theory and practice in the field as it is based upon a dual sample that provides insight into cross‐sector organizational engagement with ethics.

With the help of “self-learning” algorithms and high computing power, companies are transforming Big Data into artificial intelligence (AI)-powered information and gaining economic benefits. AI-powered information and Big Data (simply data henceforth) have quickly become some of the most important strategic resources in the global economy. However, their value is not (yet) formally recognized in financial statements, which leads to a growing gap between book and market values and thus limited decision usefulness of the underlying financial statements. The objective of this paper is to identify ways in which the value of data can be reported to improve decision usefulness.

Based on the authors' experience as both long-term practitioners and theoretical accounting scholars, the authors conceptualize and draw up a potential data value chain and show the transformation from raw Big Data to business-relevant AI-powered information during its process.

Analyzing current International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) regulations and their applicability, the authors show that current regulations are insufficient to provide useful information on the value of data. Following this, the authors propose a Framework for AI-powered Information and Big Data (FAIIBD) Reporting. This framework also provides insights on the (good) governance of data with the purpose of increasing decision usefulness and connecting to existing frameworks even further. In the conclusion, the authors raise questions concerning this framework that may be worthy of discussion in the scholarly community.

Scholars and practitioners alike are invited to follow up on the conceptual framework from many perspectives.

The framework can serve as a guide towards a better understanding of how to recognize and report AI-powered information and by that (a) limit the valuation gap between book and market value and (b) enhance decision usefulness of financial reporting.

This article proposes a conceptual framework in IFRS to regulators to better deal with the value of AI-powered information and improve the good governance of (Big)data.