Internal Audit as a Quality Assurance Instrument: A Case Study from Garment Manufacturing Enterprises in the Western Balkan Region

Abstract: The European Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles (2022) aims to ensure that by 2030 garments have a longer life, are made as much as possible from recyclable material, and are free of harmful substances. For gar­ment producers, this means compliance with mandatory requirements along the value chain focusing on the entire lifecycle of garments, while supporting the green and digital transitions within the industry ecosystem. Compliance with the new environmentally friendly standards required for garment exports in the European markets demands an improved control environment and con­solidated internal audit procedures within manufacturing enterprises. The ob­jective of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of the current internal audit procedures in garment manufacturing enterprises located in the Western Bal­kan region and exporting to end customers in the European market and oth­er international markets. In doing so this paper analyses a sample of thirty en­terprises according to 5Cs elements of internal audit. The 5Cs in the internal au­dit include the criteria, conditions, causes, consequences, and corrective actions within the sample of the enterprises. Based on 5Cs elements new improvements in the standard operating internal audit procedures in garment manufacturing enterprises are proposed in line with new European strategies.

9th International Scientific ERAZ Conference – ERAZ 2023 – Conference Proceedings: KNOWLEDGE BASED SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, hybrid – online, virtually and in person, Prague, Czech Republic, June 1, 2023

ERAZ Conference Proceedings published by: Association of Economists and Managers of the Balkans – Belgrade, Serbia

ERAZ conference partners: Faculty of Logistics, University of Maribor, Maribor (Slovenia); University of National and World Economy – UNWE, Sofia (Bulgaria); Center for Political Research and Documentation (KEPET), Research Laboratory of the Department of Political Science of University of Crete (Greece); Institute of Public Finance – Zagreb (Croatia); Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality Ohrid, University of St. Kliment Ohridski from Bitola (North Macedonia)

ERAZ Conference 2023 Conference Proceedings: ISBN 978-86-80194-72-1, ISSN 2683-5568, DOI: https://doi.org/10.31410/ERAZ.2023

Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission. 

Suggested citation

Kacani, J., & Kopani, S. (2023). Internal Audit as a Quality Assurance Instrument: A Case Study from Garment Manufacturing Enterprises in the Western Balkan Region. In V. Bevanda (Ed.), ERAZ Conference – Knowlegde Based Sustainable Development: Vol 9. Conference Proceedings (pp. 155-162). Association of Economists and Managers of the Balkans. https://doi.org/10.31410/ERAZ.2023.155

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