Effective Data Analytics and Security Strategies in Internal Audit Organizations

The digitization of the corporate and regulatory environment presents an opportunity for internal audit organizations to change their audit techniques and increase their value to corporations. Audit functions have not kept pace with these advancements, as evidenced by the massive frauds in recent years, and current audit methodology does not robustly incorporate analytics and security of data. Grounded in agency theory, the purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore successful strategies business leaders use to implement data analytics and security for internal auditing and fraudulent activity. The participants comprised 3 audit leaders in Pennsylvania, who effectively used data analytics and security strategies to promote quality audits and detect fraud. Data collected from semistructured interviews and company documents facilitated thematic analysis. Four themes emerged: data analytics framework, human capital, technology, and stakeholder engagement. A key recommendation for successful implementation of data analytics is a strategy to staff the audit function with the appropriate level of IT and finance skills, which would reduce the overall cost of implementation. The implications for positive social change include the potential to increase confidence in financial statements and the potential for job opportunities and support of economic growth in the local communities

Mapping the way forward: education for sustainability in architecture and urban design

Given the growing relevance of the sustainability agenda to the professions of the built environment, one way to ensure that its mandates are effectively integrated in architecture and urban design is to revisit the role that education, particularly at university level, can play. It is well understood that this requires a significant paradigm shift in the underlying pedagogies involved in educating for sustainability. It could be argued therefore that one of the main challenges is to address the dichotomy between effectively integrating creative expression with rigorous technical exploration, this being a core demand of high-quality sustainable design. As such, advances in curriculum development must seek to promote this integration more effectively, and, in so doing, facilitate knowledge transfer between both the creative and the scientific disciplines that are core to a sustainable architecture and urban design process. In response, this paper explores the outcomes of a European project, EDUCATE (Environmental Design in University Curricula and Architectural Training in Europe), seeking to look critically at the barriers and opportunities afforded by implementing sustainability in pre- and post-professional education in architecture and urban design, and exploring some of the strategies required to promote such integration. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment