Hybrid internal auditing: will communication mode and message reprocessibility affect managers’ willingness to share knowledge with internal auditors?

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to investigate how communication mode and message reprocessibility influence managers’ intentions to share knowledge with an internal auditor. The authors investigate three modes (e-mail, videoconference and face-to-face) and two levels of message reprocessibility (recorded and not recorded). Design/methodology/approach - The study uses an experiment with a 2 × 2 + 1 design with communication mode and message reprocessibility variables randomly assigned to 243 participants. The study also includes an open-ended question on how communication mode and message reprocessibility affect knowledge sharing with an internal auditor. Findings - Results from the experiment identify that managers are more likely to share knowledge with internal auditors when the communication mode is high in media richness (face-to-face or videoconference) than low in media richness (e-mail). Message reprocessibility does not significantly influence managers’ intentions to share knowledge. Additionally, responses to an open-ended question identify that managers have differing views on how message reprocessibility and communication mode influence knowledge sharing, which provides an avenue for future research. Originality/value - This study examines the communication mode of the manager (not the auditor) on knowledge sharing. In addition, the investigation of message reprocessibility within an audit setting is unique to this study. Our results inform internal auditors’ selection of communication mode and decision to record communications.