Internrevisorn och Internrevision: Ett yrke och en verksamhet i förändring?

Sammanfattning: In today’s larger companies internal auditing is a common concept. For about twenty years ago companies’ use of internal auditing took a turn from having been something popular to becoming more notorious. In this thesis we examine what might have caused that turn, We do this by looking at the vision and way of working for about twenty years ago and how the view of the area is today. Our comparison is based on internal auditors’ as well as external auditors’ perspectives from then and now as well as some approaches from managers. This, in combi-nation with some theories about what the internal auditor’s role and work have been like and is today lead us to our discussion about what the differences are between the two time periods. The reasons why the internal auditing today is more popular might be: the role of the internal auditor has been more theoretically developed, the competence of the internal auditors is gen-erally higher today, the owner structure in many companies has changed, there is more regula-tion within the area these days and also because the role of the internal auditor as a consultant has been developed. We do not think that there is any major difference concerning the vision of what the internal auditing means and how is should be practised. Therefore we conclude that within the examined area, greater regulation in combination with a changed owner struc-ture has affected the internal auditing the most. If the internal auditing is going to deliver any benefits of importance for the different parts of the organisation (not only work for the interest of stockowners), we think that the communication between the internal auditors and the or-ganisation has to become better.