The Adoption of Continuous Auditing Technology:
Exploring its Antecedents through UTAUT
George Gonzalez, Pratyush Sharma and Dr Dennis
Galletta
University of Pittsburgh
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Motivation
Theory
Research Design
Results
Conclusion
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Motivation
• Continuous Auditing (CA) about two decades old
(Groomer and Murthy 1989; Vasarhelyi et al. 1991).
• Widely touted as a control tool.
• Adoption so far mainly limited to internal
auditors (Chan and Vasarhelyi 2011).
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Motivation (cont’d)
• Practitioner surveys: current adoption low-tomoderate, but planned adoption high (PwC 2006;
KPMG 2010; Grant Thornton 2010).
• Everyone seems agree that CA would be a great
idea, but actual adoption continues to lag. Why?
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Motivation
Theory
Research Design
Results
Conclusion
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Theory
• Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of
Technology (UTAUT) (Venkatesh et al. 2003)
• An IS framework for assessing an individual’s
intention to use an IS technology.
• UTAUT is refinement of its successor, Technology
Acceptance Model (TAM).
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Theory (cont’d)
UTAUT’s four antecedents to intentions to use:
• Effort expectancy (EE)
• Performance expectancy (PE)
• Social influence (SI)
• Facilitating conditions (FC)
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Theory (cont’d)
• We adopt UTAUT to explore the perceptions of
potential CA users embedded in organizations.
• We explore the relationship between their
current perceptions about CA technology and
their intentions to use it.
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Effort
Expectancy
Research Model
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Performance
Expectancy
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Adoption
Facilitating
Conditions
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Social
Influence
Sales
Voluntary
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Motivation
Theory
Research Design
Results
Conclusion
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Research Design
• Survey of Institute of Management Accountants
(IMA) members.
• IMA members working in internal auditing, risk
management, information systems or general
accounting.
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Research Design (cont’d)
• Survey questions on UTAUT model antecedents:
PE, EE, SI, FC
• Survey questions adopted from UTAUT
• Control variable questions:
– Annual sales
– Voluntariness of use
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Research Design (cont’d)
• Partial least squares based Structural Equation
Modeling (PLS-SEM) for analysis of survey
responses.
• Based on PLS-SEM analysis results, we determine
which antecedents (PE, EE, SI, FC) are key for the
adoption of CA technology.
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Motivation
Theory
Research Design
Results
Conclusion
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Descriptives
• 9,013 surveys e-mailed worldwide
• 210 usable responses (2.33% response rate)
• geographic breakdown:
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North America 61%
Middle East 27%
Asia 6%
Europe 4%
other regions 2%
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Key Findings
• Perception of Effort Expectancy strongly predicts
intention to use CA.
• Additionally, perception of Social Influence also
strongly predicts intention to use CA.
• Perceptions of Performance Expectancy and
Facilitating Conditions are not significant
predictors of intention to use.
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Motivation
Theory
Research Design
Results
Conclusion
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Implications
• Build positive perceptions of Effort Expectancy
among potential users
• Build positive perceptions of Social Influence
among potential users
• To accomplish this…
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Implications
Educate potential users regarding CA system’s:
• Reasonable learning curve
• Ease of user interaction
• Ease of use
• Reduction in work effort
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Implications
• Finally, it is critical for top management to
endorse CA technology…
• And support its use
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