Abstract The article presents comments in response to the article "Determinants of Information Systems Audit Involvement in EDI Systems Development," by Bonnie W. Morris and Ann B. Pushkin, published in the September 1995 issue of the "Journal of Information Systems." Morris and Pushkin report the results of a survey that attempts to determine why firms involve information systems auditors in electronic data interchange (EDI) system development. Auditor involvement in systems development is a way of increasing internal control over the resulting systems. The study draws on organization theory literature to construct a model of the relationships among organizational context, organizational strategy, and the internal audit function. This model views the internal audit function as one element in the organizational control structure. The model does not explicitly consider the cost of auditing EDI system development. The study's greatest weakness is its failure to motivate the ambitious task it undertakes. Internal auditors have always selected a subset of their firms' activities for audit.
Gary P. Schneider (Fri,) studied this question.