Management Audit: What It Is and Why It Matters

As a relatively recent technique, management auditing can be understood as an extension of performance auditing.
We can say that the main objective of the management audit is to understand if there is an economic allocation of resources available to the manager. It is to check whether these are being applied effectively and efficiently.

Audit Techniques

Several management audit techniques are applied, covering different assessment methods, policies, tasks and procedures, which are constructed in order to assess, analyze and review the company’s performance against a list of previously determined standards.

The performance of managers and companies’ profitability is thus measured and evaluated by the auditor, concluding with an assessment that will indicate the current status of the aforementioned situations, as well as the improvements and best practices that can be implemented. The internal control system and the auditor are thus in close contact.

Management Functions and Model Program

In the book on financial auditing , «Financial Audit – Theory and Practice» by Carlos Baptista da Costa, he states that the functions of management are, primarily:
“a) Setting policies and objectives;
b) Establish plans, rules and procedures so that the established policies and objectives can be achieved;
c) Organize the company or entity so that the plans, rules and procedures can actually operate;
d) Control how these plans, rules and procedures are achieving their goals.
Therefore, the model program that the auditor must follow to assess managers, either with regard to the effectiveness and efficiency of the company’s management, in general, or regarding its functional areas in particular, will have to cover the following aspects:
a) Check if objectives and policies have been set;
b) Evaluate the entire planning process, which necessarily includes norms, procedures, maps and priorities;
c) Assess the entire organizational process, that is, assess whether the organizational structure is consistent with global policies and objectives;
d) Analyze the control process, that is, the performance measures. To this end, the management auditor must necessarily:
– Verify that management has identified the key areas that must be controlled;
– Evaluate and judge the bases used to develop the measurement standards;
– Review parameters to identify performance and results. (…)”

concluding

The management audit is thus a service that managers can benefit from in order to have access to external insights and be able, in the best way, to proceed with their organizational tasks, thus understanding aspects and ways of improvement, as well as the path to implementation of solutions that lead to this improvement.

It is a fundamental support to the day-to-day activities of companies, thus ensuring that they are able to function better.