Yang, M; Hui, Q; Yang, Q; Fan, M and Li, X (2025) A study on the key drivers of national construction project audit risk and evolvement mechanism. Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, 32(1), pp. 427-453. ISSN 0969-9988
Abstract
Purpose: China has recently introduced a new audit law that aims to increase the scope of audit supervision and raise the standards for preventing risks in auditing national public projects. This paper presents a systematic research study on the causes of audit risks in national public projects and discusses the process by which these causes contribute to the emergence of such risks. Furthermore, the paper investigates the core risk sources in various types of national construction project audit. This paper aims to provide theoretical support for auditors of national construction projects in risk avoidance when conducting audits. Design/methodology/approach: In this study, the authors carefully selected five national public audit projects from China and performed a comprehensive analysis of 85 relevant audit documentation. The textual analysis was conducted using Nvivo12 software, and the grounded theory approach was adopted for generalization purposes. Findings: Based on the research results, the findings suggest that there are five key causes contributing to the audit risk of national construction projects: professional competence, risk awareness, management capacity, level of attention and deliberate fraud. The most critical factor identified is management capability, with 59.93% of the data supporting this view. This conclusion was based on an analysis of state-owned enterprises, administrative organs and public institutions. Building upon this, a framework titled "the mechanism of audit risk factors with management capability as the core" was constructed. Originality/value: This paper employs qualitative analysis methods to examine national construction projects in China, contributing new literature to the theoretical study of audit risk management. The article also provides practical recommendations for auditors on how to mitigate audit risks and improve the quality of audit services in national project governance.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | audit risk; micro-causes; national construction projects audit; qualitative analysis |
| Index terms: | construction project, documentation, methodology, fraud, audit, critical factor, public project, competence, qualitative analysis, China, risk management, governance, supervision, risk factor, emergence, grounded theory |
| Subjects: | theoretical framing, professional ethics, research design and methodology, infrastructure engineering, business, control systems, professional development, personnel development, performance measurement, risk assessment, environmental hazards, production management, research methods, Geography, systems engineering |
| Topics: | Human Resources, Information Management, Geographical Context, Governance, Engineering Principles, Sustainability, Risk Management, Research Practice, Legal Issues, Project Management, Quality Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here