"In The Closing of the Auditor's Mind? David J. O'Regan describes internal auditing as an important "binding agent" of social cohesion, for the accountability of individuals and organizations and also at aggregated levels of social trust. However, O'Regan also reveals that internal auditing faces two severe challenges - an external challenge of adaptation and an internal challenge of fundamental reform. The adaptation challenge arises from ongoing, paradigmatic shifts in accountability and social trust. The command-and-control, vertical hierarchies of traditional bureaucracies are being replaced in importance by networked, flattened patterns of accountability. The most challenging assurance demands of the modern era are increasingly located in THREE institutional domains - in the inner workings of organizations; in intermediary spaces at organizational boundaries; and in extra-mural locations. Internal auditing continues to cling, barnacle-like, to the inner workings of traditional, bureaucratic structures, and it has little to offer the emerging assurance demands on or beyond institutional boundaries. The reform challenge arises from internal auditing's prevailing tendency toward a rigid, algorithmic, checklist mindset that suppresses practitioners' creativity and critical thinking. This trend is increasingly narrowing internal auditing's intellectual and moral horizons. Under the pressures of these challenges, internal auditing is struggling to fulfil its primary purpose of serving the public interest"-- Provided by publisher.

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