A SYSTEMS-BASED CONCEPTUAL-FRAMEWORK FOR AUDITING

Since the stock market crash of 1929, the auditing profession has rapi dly emerged in advanced economies. The procedures of the profession ha ve generally evolved out of political processes without the systematic guidance of a cohesive conceptual framework- That eclectic approach h as produced generally accepted accounting principles that encourage pu blication of global organizational performance assessments such as net income that have little obvious connection to the concrete processes they purport to describe. The approach, furthermore, allows fragmented and disconnected auditing procedures. This paper presents an interpre tive and analytical study of auditing in organizations and societies. A systematic conceptual framework of auditing based on observable, mea surable entities is developed through living systems theory. This appr oach provides a means of applying to auditing the well developed inves tigation methods and procedures of the sciences.