A Contribution of the ISO 9000 Internal Audit to the Achievement of the Company Goals

Abstract

The paper presents the relations between an internal audit as a demand of ISO 9000 quality standards and company efficiency. The relations were developed upon studying of literature and different international and domestic research about the topic. On this basis two hypotheses were developed and analytically proved. It was assumed that in properly motivated companies internal audit has more positive than negative effects upon business performance of a company. It was also assumed that in those companies internal audit considerably contributes to the achievement of the company goals and this way to better company efficiency. As a result of the research conceptual models were built. On the basis of relations between ISO 9000 management systems and other well-known management systems the models showed some key relations among quality management systems, internal audits and business performance (achievement of the company goals). A placement of an internal audit among analytic tools of the strategic management was presented, too. These theoretically grounded and analytically proved findings were supported by studied previous empirical research, too. The empirical part of our research, carried out in the biggest Slovenian company Mercator, gave a significant support to these hypotheses, too. The findings of this paper could help quality managers at implementation and development of their quality management systems and at development of the internal audit into an effective management tool. This research sets a basis for further empirical investigation of presented expected effects of an internal audit.