ETHICS AND INTERNAL AUDIT: WHISTLEBLOWING ISSUES

Bunget, Ovidiu-Constantin and
David-Sobolevschi, Maria-Iulia
West University from Timisoara (Romania),
Faculty of Economics and Business Administration,
Accounting Department, Academy of Economic Studies Bucharest

Abstract:

It is undisputed that the companies’ performances are now more than ever,in the concerns caused by global competition and financial crisis. In this context, one of the interveners in the direction of performance is having an ethical and responsable behavior regrading the public. An ethical behavioris related first of all to the idea of morality, above respecting the law. Ethics aims to the heart of the corporate’s reputation and in the end that is all you have if you hope to be successful and prosperous in the business world (Harold Tinkler-director of ethics departament of Deloitte & Touche).

Developing a system of ethical values within an organization depends not only on the framework provided by the law, but also by creating a participatory framework in order to eliminate waste, or other forms of fraud.Whistleblowing („who blows the whistle”) which can be translated by „giving signals” means that employees can be a part of the internal structures ofcompanies with duties of discovering non-ethical practices. Whistleblowing policy is the result of implementation by U.S. firms which are present in other states, of the Sarbanes Oxley Act in the U.S. What these companies do not realize is that the implementation of whistleblowing schemes in Romania can be interpreted as a violation of the rights of data subjects to personaldata protection.
Being an anglo-saxon practice type, the question is to what extent theEuropean type company will be able to fald with and also how it can be controlled? It is believed that controling the activity of whistleblowing can be performed by a specialized team of internal audit department. So, internal auditors should realise also missions regarding the research of those tort facts reported by employees. Whistleblowing is designed as a just and effective mean in order to improve the individual and collective behavior of a company.

Keywords: company, ethics, internal audit, whistleblowing

(SRS-048-JEL classification: M42, Paper No. 17312, posted 15. September 2009 )