Abstract
Financial reporting is a key output of Information Technology (IT). Thus, to assure the reliability of financial reporting, the IT audit has to be evaluated. The evaluation of IT Audit is necessary also when the IT is outsourced.
This paper aims to identify the determinants of the Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) decision in Italy and to test empirically the ITO framework developed theoretically by Lacity et al. (2011), using the variable construction based on Lacity et al. (2010). We use a questionnaire addressed to Italian companies which are today obliged to comply with Law 262/2005. The aim is to test the reliability of financial reporting through the evaluation of internal control, such as IT audit. We control for the non-response bias. We build a panel data for our regression model. We find that client firm characteristics, Task Complexity and ITO outcomes are significant for Italian listed companies in the ITO decision. The findings are original in that they concern a country which has specific characteristics and where very little empirical research exists on the topic.