However, the corporate collapse of HIH Insurance in Australia has raised more questions than answers regarding the integrity of the accounting and auditing profession. The audit expectation gap is the difference between the actual performance of an auditor and what society thinks. According to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants in 1992, the expectation gap is defined as the difference between what the public and financial users think audit responsibility is and what the auditors think their role is(?). The importance of professional scepticism is essential in enhancing the societal view on auditors. An auditor supplies the independence and objectivity to a financial report complementing the high expectations of third party users The professional judgement required is influenced by some professional traits such as the auditor’s experience and capability of the auditors training.
Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry developed the gap model which became the main approach to quantitatively assessing service quality (Using a survey approach) they focused on customer’s expectations and perceptions regarding to the five dimensions described above. According to this model service quality can be also described as “closing the gap” between expectations and perceptions of service. Many researchers have defined four “company gaps” that underlie the overall shortfall in customers’ expectations/perceptions as developed by Gap 1: Not Knowing What Customers Expect. This gap is due to the difference between customer expectations of service and the particularly management, understanding of those expectations. Four factors have been supposed to be responsible for this gap.
Other than that, the reliabilities of the financial statement also will be suspected if there is a breach of auditor’s objectivity. Due to this, auditors should avoid this kind of problem through the conflict resolution process in order to maintain their independence. If the above situation is not properly managed, the expectation gap will be affected. This is because the public’s perception on the auditor’s responsibilities is not met by the auditors as the auditor is fail to detecting the fraud and involving in the threat that affect independence. Although, the failure of detecting fraud is not necessary the fault of auditor but certain public users might consider that it is the auditor’s responsibilities as they lack of knowledge about the limitation of the audit
This is why it’s essential to keep customers satisfied and this can be done by studying their expectations and perceptions, assessing the organisations service quality and applying improvement measures where necessary. The SERVQUAL model The SERVQUAL model identifies reasons for any gaps between customer expectations and perceptions. The expectations and perceptions are accessed from 22 questions which serve as a SERVQUAL scale, furthermore five dimensions of service quality namely: reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy and responsiveness, are used to analyse service quality. Perceived service quality results from comparisons from customer perceptions and expectations of service delivered by the service providers (Zeithamal et al., 1990). If a gap score is positive it indicates that expectations are exceeded.
Over the years, the evaluation criteria have evolved into a hierarchy. Importance to measure and report reflects the greatest potential of driving improvement and resides at the top of the hierarchy. If a measure is not important, the other criterion are less important. This must-pass criterion focuses the evidence for the measure focus and gaps in care, with demonstrated considerable variation or less-than-optimal performance across providers and populations. The evidence criterion requires a systematic review or an assessment of the quality, quantity and consistency of the body of evidence for the measure focus.
The treatment of intangibles (quantification) and the problem of equity have been discussed above. These issues represent limitations of the method in the sense that neither is addressed ‘automatically’ in the cost-benefit process. If the decision-maker is to be in a position properly to take account of intangible considerations and equity concerns, the analyst must, in a sense, go beyond the ordinary requirements of a cost-benefit analysis. Similarly, when the decision-makers interest is naturally focused on the ‘bottom line’, it is easy for the analysis itself to be rather obscure. No analysis is better than the assumptions on which it is based and, in the interest of ‘quality control’, assumptions should always be made explicit.
The Importance of Accountability Why is Accountability so important in the health care industry? Even though a situation may be positive or negative, every aspect of health care needs to be credited to something or someone, with accountability, errors can be fixed and then prevented and helps keep costs down. An employee accountability is measured by customer satisfaction, results of performance, and the cost and impacts of the employee over time, and affects an organization’s working culture by their values, integrity and work ethics. A successful organization follows the checks and balance process, maintains a positive working culture, and stays clear from blame. The importance of accountability in the health care industry Accountability
One of the responsibilities of the audit committee is to monitor the integrity and completeness of the company’s financial reporting. This includes evaluating judgements and reporting decisions, such as changes in accounting
Integrity. A core building block fundamental to the successes of any professional in this world. Yet, what does it truly mean and how does it apply to internal auditing profession?? In the simplest form, integrity is described as ‘doing the right thing when no one is watching’. It requires courage to do the right thing, no matter what the consequences will be.
In particular they are inclined to see their interest as clashing, incompatible. This supports the idea of the ‘Fixed-Pie Belief’. The negotiations results will depend on whether parties have or do not have similar interests and whether or not the issues are or are not compatible with each other. Another implication which was found as a result from the experiments shows that biased conflict perceptions are quite strongly swayed by interests which relate to oneself. It was proven also that issues can be misconstrued to be ones of too great importance and one may then overestimate the amount of conflict.