Role and Responsibility of External Auditor in Auditing the Corporate Environmental Performance: A Theoretical Study

Abstract

The main goal of this study is to determine the role and responsibility of external auditor in auditing the environmental performance of industrial corporations. Such goal could be split into sub-goals such as; understanding the concept of environmental auditing, recognizing the importance and the types of environmental auditing. Moreover, It will expand the role and the responsibility of external auditor to include new tasks. To achieve such goals, this paper incorporates a theoretical study to clarify the different concepts of environmental auditing and its relationship with social auditing and financial auditing, and a field study to test the hypotheses. The field study incorporated three questionnaires; the first one was sent to the external auditors, the second was sent to the brokers, and the third was sent to the managers of industrial corporations. The findings of this study indicated that the concept of environmental auditing is still not clear and there is a mix between the technical concept and the accounting concept. Also, all stakeholders agreed about the role and responsibility of external auditor in auditing the level of compliance of industrial corporations to environmental law, and in verifying the precision of the measurement and disclosure of financial effects of environmental issues. In addition some judgments are still hovering around the role and responsibility of external auditor about auditing the level of compliance to environmental standards and evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the environmental programs.