According to widespread opinion, the meaning of body part terms is determined by salient discontinuities in the visual image; such that hands, feet, arms, and legs, are natural parts. If so, one would expect these parts to have distinct names which correspond in meaning across languages. To test this proposal, we compared three unrelated languages-Dutch, Japanese, and Indonesian-and found both naming systems and boundaries of even basic body part terms display variation across languages. Bottom-up cues alone cannot explain natural language semantic systems; there simply is not a one-to-one mapping of the body semantic system to the body structural description. Although body parts are flexibly construed across languages, body parts semantics are, nevertheless, constrained by non-linguistic representations in the body structural description, suggesting these are necessary, although not sufficient, in accounting for aspects of the body lexicon.

Historically professional logic has shaped accountancy, increasingly it has been shaped also by commercial logic. This study moves beyond these distinctions for a better and more nuanced analyses of how actors (Big 4 auditors) navigate conflicting logics in their everyday practice. The study follows a qualitative approach and is based on views of multiple role players in the audit process of complex companies in Australia, South Africa and the United Kingdom. The study examines auditors’ decision-making involving experts, rotating partners/firms and meeting regulatory inspection requirements. The study adds to the emerging debate around logic multiplicity at the institutional ‘coalface’ by showing that auditors use balancing mechanisms (segmenting, assimilating, bridging and demarcating) to navigate and make sense of coexisting (professional, commercial and accountability) logics. Views of non-auditor role players, mostly overlooked in by institutional research at micro-levels, challenge the institutionalisation of connected logics and question the influence on audit quality.

The paper presents secondary empirical data from the Common Body of Knowledge study, on the use of audit tools and techniques by internal auditors in South Africa and compared its findings on South African internal audit functions with those of developed regions. It investigates the current use of the audit tools and techniques by the internal auditors in South Africa. This paper also reviewed relevant literature to support arguments for the use of audit tools and techniques by the internal auditors. The study found that internal audit functions in South Africa use audit tools and techniques similar to that of developed regions. The paper also found that internal auditors mostly use audit tools and techniques, such as risk based planning electronic, communication, analytical reviews and working papers. The paper concludes that, while other audit tools and techniques are important to have, the most preferred enhances the quality of the audit process.

Internal auditing has been called upon to enhance its value proposition for organisations and one way of doing this is to demonstrate its effectiveness. By using the responses of participants from the BRICS countries on the 2010 global Common Body of Knowledge survey of the Institute of Internal Auditors in conjunction with the elements of the Internal Audit Capability Model this study examines the convergence towards internal audit effectiveness by the BRICS countries. The study uses a neoinstitutional perspective to demonstrate how internal auditing in the BRICS countries has responded to coercive, normative and mimetic pressures to demonstrate effectiveness. The study shows that coercive pressures for internal auditing exist in all the BRICS countries, but owing to the voluntary internal audit structure in Russia, such pressure appears to be lower in that country. Using professionalism to demonstrate normative pressures, the emphasis on internal audit in the King III report of South Africa was evident. The results of this study seem to indicate that South Africa has responded more to mimetic pressures in relation to people management, professional practices and organisational relationships than other BRICS countries.