A Selective History of Management Auditing

A consideration of the history of management auditing suggests that the evolution of non‐financial audit and the rise of the internal auditor can be traced back to audit's earliest origins and that modern financial audit is a special case of more general auditing. Professional audit came about partly through legislation and partly to serve the interests of companies. In the USA, as a narrower purpose of audit took hold, companies and government responded by the development of an internal audit function to fill the gap.