The empirical analysis of the effectiveness of internal audit and sustainability practices in businesses during the 2018 Turkish economic crisis

The ability of businesses to survive in the competitive market and increase productivity depends on the strategies they implement. While businesses can achieve successful results under normal conditions, only businesses with good strategies can be successful in times of economic crisis. Some of these strategies are internal audit and sustainability. The main objective of internal audit is to effectively meet the requirements of business management. Due to the fact that businesses direct the economic life, their environmental and social responsibilities in other words, sustainability have become visible as well as their financial responsibilities. The aim of this study is to reveal the importance of internal audit and sustainability of businesses in times of economic crisis. For this purpose, the data is obtained as a result of surveys is conducted to businesses’ employees within the scope of the research are examined. In this study, which is based on employees working as manager in businesses, simple random sampling method is used and surveys are conducted to 122 business managers. The 10 incomplete and incorrectly filled surveys are excluded from the study, and the remaining 112 survey data are used. Descriptive statistics of internal audit and sustainability scales are obtained and interpreted. In addition, normality tests are performed for these two scales, and as a result, Mann Whitey-U and Kruskal-Wallis tests are applied to examine the differences between the means according to demographic variables in the series that are not normally distributed. As a result, it has been determined that there are significant differences in internal audit and sustainability practices for businesses according to the demographic characteristics of employees working as manager during the economic crisis period. In particular, it is concluded that there are significant differences according to age in terms of both internal audit and sustainability and education level only in terms of internal audit. In conclusion, it has been determined that the conscious and effective use of internal audit and sustainability contributes to performance of businesses in time of the 2018 Turkish economic crisis.