2.3 Communication Theory
In accordance with the needs of the IIA as the professional body that takes care of internal auditing, several studies such as by Davidson (1991), Quinn and Hargie (2004) and Golen (2008), confirm the importance of and the need for effective communication skills in all organization functions. Studies done by Lewis and Graham (1988) and Smith (2005) suggested some ways to improve these communication skills. Previous studies by Hahn (2008) and Golen (2008) discussed communication barriers and how they can be overcome. At the same time, several previous studies have dedicated their work to communication in organizations. These studies evidenced that, effective communication and interpersonal relationships between managers and staff have a strong contribution to improve profitability, and productivity; and it leads to higher quality of services and products, and reduction in costs (Clampitt & Downs, 1993). According to both IIA Standards and previous studies, the study of effective communication in internal auditing is necessary, and hence this study should consider the communication theory for its achievement. Davidson (1991) confirms that, all auditors can benefit from knowledge of current communication concepts, and even those who believe they are good communicators need to work consciously on assessing, improving, and applying their skills. Davidson’s communication theory is based on three basic truths about communication. These are: (1) it is impossible not to communicate; (2) communication is a multilevel phenomenon, and (3) message sent does not always equal message received.
Lewis and Graham (1988) mentioned that, communication – as a word - comes from the Latin word “communicare” which means to make common. Thus, to communicate is the process of creating a common meaning with someone or some group. In other words, one person can talk, but it takes at least two people to communicate. Guo (2009) defines communication as, transfer of meaning or mutual understanding among at least two individuals to share information about a subject or issue and arrive at an agreed upon meaning. This confirms the first two points in Davidson’s communication theory.
Inability to communicate effectively could be related to inappropriate information or communication complexity. Hahn (2008) confirmed that much information is as bad as little information because it reduces the receiver’s ability to concentrate effectively on the most significant messages. In such an environment, internal audit users may have new concerns about their trust for internal auditors’ performance. Thus, effective communication becomes necessary as a solution to this problem. To overcome such communication problems, Hahn (2008) recommends parties of the communication process to focus and offer only the necessary information by easy ways - provide meaning to the information rather than just pass on the message, and keep the information clear and simple to understand and finally ask for feedback. The existence of effective communication between internal auditors themselves, internal auditors and auditees, internal auditors and organization members, without any doubt, is needed to strengthen the internal audit effectiveness. As has been pointed out earlier, agency theory can explain and cover the importance of having an effective communication between organization members and internal auditors as agents to them. However, the importance of effective communication in this study extends to include the relationship between internal auditors and auditees, which can be explained under the communication theory. In this study, effective communication is one of the main factors for the effectiveness, which is measured by examining the relationship with auditees. However, there are several factors, which could contribute to the weakness of this relationship such as, accusatory style from internal auditors or just looking for the auditees’ weaknesses. Such environment leads to lack of trust among internal auditors and auditees and creates one of the main communication barriers, which is a lack of trust among sender(s) and receiver(s) in communication processes (Hahn, 2008). Thus, to prevent such threats, it is necessary to improve auditees' collaboration with internal auditors.
Based on the foregoing discussion, it is doubtless that, the employment of communication theory in this study becomes necessary to establish the conceptual framework.