Abstract
There has been a global shift in the business environment owing to the four industrial revolutions. Each revolution prompted a metamorphosis of professions to remain relevant and to perform their duties effectively and efficiently while continuing to provide value to their organisations and broader stakeholders. The fourth industrial revolution (4IR), which is the most prominent in history, requires professionals like internal auditors working in audit firms or internal audit departments to adopt various digital tools and techniques to fulfil their duties. Because of the advancements of 4IR and adverse global events, organisations are increasingly dependent on computerised systems, coupled with a complex business environment highly driven by exponential volumes of data and perpetual technology updates. There is an expectation for internal audit professionals to evolve and acquire digital skills. These digital skills and proficiency are essential for the internal audit profession seeking to navigate the technology-driven environment and leverage the available digital tools and techniques while adding value to stakeholders who are impacted by the work performed by internal auditors.
Technology has influenced the internal audit profession and the development of its skills. The study, therefore, focused on internal audit graduates, who are expected to have and be able to demonstrate various skills as they enter the corporate market. These digital skills enable internal audit graduates to navigate the digital environment and add value to their organisation and broader stakeholders. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are uniquely positioned to prepare internal audit graduates for the complex corporate environment. The proficiency of digital skills reflects the quality of the institution's qualifications. Thus, the inability of an internal audit graduate to demonstrate digital proficiency impacts their employability. Furthermore, there has been an acceleration of the higher education sector's integration of digital tools in assignments, research projects, and assessments, resulting from technological advancements in the business environment. However, literature suggests that there is a lack of facilitation of HEIs in developing the digital skills of internal audit graduates. Other studies' results reveal that internal audit graduates still lack the necessary digital skills required in practice.
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Additionally, there is fragmentation in the literature about what is characterised by the term digital skills.
The study embarked on a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) on digital skills required for HEIs to develop in internal audit graduates. The available literature demonstrates a lack of SLRs that provide a comprehensive view of the required digital skills for internal auditors. The study, therefore, sought to use an SLR to provide guidelines or a framework for the required digital skills that HEIs are developing in internal audit graduates and the digital skills required of internal audit graduates in a digital environment. The Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) provides a competency framework that enlists various knowledge areas; however, limited academic literature assesses these knowledge areas and their development in HEIs. As part of the SLR, an inductive coding scheme was employed to answer the research questions and achieve the study’s objectives. The SLR analysis included 71 academic works.
The findings of the study reveal that the HEIs employ various delivery methods that target specific skill sets to integrate into the collaborative blended learning environment to successfully impart digital skills in internal audit graduates. The implementation of these delivery methods is not uniform and varies based on institutional capacity and educator expertise; thus, it cannot be a generalised approach across HEIs around the world. Furthermore, digital skills cannot be taught in isolation and are a combination of cognitive, intrapersonal/interpersonal skills, with the foundation being internal audit technical competencies and the IIA Competency Framework. These findings are used in this study to map digital skills required by internal audit stakeholders of internal audit graduates that HEIs should focus on. In this regard, different stakeholders require a different set of skills to derive value from the work performed by internal auditors. The contributions of this study include adopting the findings of digital skills in the Audit Standards or Competency Framework and adding comprehensive guidelines for the digital skills development of internal audit graduates in HEIs in the body of knowledge.