Assessing The Impact of Internal Audit Characteristics on The Internal Audit Reporting Quality: Evidence from Saudi Arabia

This study examines how specific internal audit characteristics influence the quality of internal audit reports in Saudi Arabia. The research is grounded in the resource-based view. It focuses basically on five key characteristics of the IAF. They are competence, objectivity, work performance, corporate governance quality, and internal control system effectiveness. These characteristics represent valuable human and organizational resources. A 5-point Likert scale questionnaire was developed to collect primary data that was analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings reveal that work performance, as a human-based characteristic, as well as corporate governance and internal control systems, as environmental characteristics, significantly influence the quality of internal audit reports. The results provide theoretical implications as they confirm the view of internal audit capabilities as valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable (VRIN) resources that can enhance organizational audit quality. By framing internal audit characteristics and IRQ as strategic resources, the study demonstrates how strengthening internal audit functions can lead to greater audit outputs in terms of higher quality reports. These results provide practical implications for audit committees, internal auditors, and regulatory bodies seeking to strengthen the effectiveness of internal auditing and enhance internal audit outputs in the Saudi context.