INTERNAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND AGILE AUDITING: A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO CORPORATE INNOVATION AND RISK MANAGEMENT
In recent years, a significant change has occurred in business management perspectives, with agility coming to the forefront as performance evaluation processes have increased, and information technology concepts have been successfully integrated into other management research areas. The concept of agility has been transferred to various business functions, including marketing, organizational management, and auditing, and is now being applied across all processes. It is observed that the term "agility" is more commonly used in multinational companies rather than in SME management (Izvercianu, Serban, Sabina, Ivascu, 2015: 383). To meet the requirements of the modern economic environment, businesses are turning to agile methodologies. These methodologies focus on iterative and incremental software development processes, offering numerous advantages such as meeting customer needs with a flexible approach, reducing risks and costs, and ensuring a transparent process. However, the implementation of agile methodologies can make accounting and auditing processes more complex within businesses (Balaziuk, Sysoieva, & Pilyavets, 2020: 92). In this complex structure, almost all businesses are undergoing continuous change, which makes intentional transformations in both individual elements and the overall management system crucial. In such a complex framework, ensuring flexibility in auditing processes is critical, and agile auditing processes play a key role in making change manageable and applicable. Agile auditing not only makes these processes more efficient but also creates a foundation for the development of the concept of internal entrepreneurship. Particularly, these changes require innovative approaches in financial process optimization, just as they do in business management (Balaziuk et al., 2020: 92). New, socially oriented alternative approaches developed for financial risk management in entrepreneurship have been shown to increase the effectiveness of financial risk management (Zhilkina, Karp, Bodiako, Smagulova, Rogulenko, & Ponomareva, 2022). Internal entrepreneurship is defined as "innovative managers who demonstrate entrepreneurial characteristics within an organization and are responsible for transforming an idea into a profitable final product through risk-taking and innovation" (Onay & Çavuşoğlu, 2010: 49). Every decision made by internal entrepreneurs, based on their knowledge and experience, leads to financial outcomes such as profits or losses within the business. For auditing's transparency and reliability, it is important that the entrepreneur's judgment and understanding are based on a broader financial evaluation, which may be subjective in nature (Rapp & Olbrich, 2022). As a result, it is evident that businesses need to be agile and alert in the face of constantly changing business risks. In this process, internal audit teams need to undergo changes to function as strategic advisors. It is anticipated that adopting an agile internal audit methodology could address this need. Consequently, it has been highlighted that auditing processes, including the implementation of agile auditing, are crucial for auditing processes and controls across governance and compliance areas (Franham, 2022). However, agility encompasses much more than simply working faster or showing more efficiency. This requires business managers and entrepreneurs to adopt change and be willing to be flexible and adaptable. Moreover, focusing on the most critical goals and issues for the organization is also an important aspect of the process. The success of businesses in establishing agile internal audit functions becomes evident as the demand from management teams and other stakeholders increases, and the work is appreciated. In this process, auditors will utilize technological and process innovations to do more with fewer resources, thereby optimizing productivity and value (Metricstream, 2023). When the integrity of the concepts is examined, it is seen that internal entrepreneurship, combined with technology and process innovations, increases organizational productivity and ensures value optimization. Furthermore, it is anticipated that the use of agile auditing functions in response to the demands created in this process will further increase auditing opportunities. This study evaluates the common aspects of the concepts of internal entrepreneurship and agile auditing. A review of the literature revealed no studies that examine both concepts together, and it is anticipated that further research on this topic will be developed.
