Innovative ecosystem: the role of lean management auditing

The auditing of organizations’ activities plays a crucial role in ensuring the direction chosen by top management and identifying early signs of upcoming changes and threats. The audit assesses the efficient use of resources and processes and promotes corporate credibility, which is essential from investors’ perspectives, particularly in ecosystems of innovations. Meanwhile, little is known about lean auditing, which is crucial in achieving effective processes. This paper summarises the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on the issue of auditing. The research’s primary purpose is to identify types of waste in auditing and formulate the principles of lean auditing. The systematic literature review and approaches for solving the problem based on grounded theory and triangulation of methods enabled the resolving of research problems. This article analyses the internal auditing standards and guidelines and uses in-depth interviews with 19 internal auditors from different Polish public organizations from 2017 to 2020. The choice of a qualitative approach resulted from the research phenomenon’s open nature, with very few studies. It created a need for a reflective approach with respondents simultaneously being key informants and experts. The results of an empirical analysis showed that internal auditors little knew about the lean concept in audit processes. However, they noticed the benefits of using the lean concept in the audit. The research enabled the development of the model of lean auditing. It could help improve the audit process, which is particularly important from the innovation ecosystem perspective. Besides, one determined the waste of auditing and formulated the principles of lean auditing. The research results develop the audit theory and are helpful for practitioners. Improved internal audit better meets stakeholders’ expectations regarding the spending of funds and implementation of tasks.