External auditing and its impact on enhancing the sustainable performance of companies

Abstract

The research addresses the role of external auditing in improving the sustainable performance of companies and highlights the relationship between external auditing and sustainable practices, focusing on how it affects enhancing transparency, compliance with environmental laws, achieving efficiency in resource utilization, and identifying the role played by auditing in urging companies to achieve distinguished and sustainable performance and its importance as a modern service that has not yet received the attention it deserves, which requires clarifying its dimensions and mechanism of action. Given the absence of specific standards that the auditor relies on when providing this service to ensure achieving sustainable performance, this research came to shed light on the role played by external auditing in enhancing sustainability in performance. The research relied on a questionnaire form in the applied aspect that was designed for the purpose of testing the responsibility of the external auditor in enhancing, examining, evaluating and sustainable performance. The research dealt with a group of external auditors and auditors in the Federal Financial Supervision Bureau, where (60) questionnaires were distributed. The research reached a number of conclusions, the most prominent of which were (there are no mandatory courses for external auditors specializing in the environmental or social aspect, but rather they are mostly specialized in the accounting and administrative aspect, as well as there are shortcomings and weaknesses in the laws and regulations related to the work of external auditing in the environmental and social aspect), and the research also reached a number of recommendations, the most important of which was (the external auditor must draw the attention of the company's management to adhere to the laws and regulations related to the environmental and social aspects for the benefit of companies through what they receive from rewards or letters of thanks and appreciation from the government or the organizations sponsoring these aspects, whether local or international, and thus raise the value of the company. In the market, there is a need for a framework of professional standards necessary to perform the sustainable performance audit service, meaning that implementing the sustainable performance audit task in order to be done with high quality requires providing its own standards and guidelines, similar to the standards for auditing financial statements.