Agency Theory in University Governance and the Role of Internal Audit: From the Private Sector Perspectives to the Case of Vietnamese Public Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

Along with the trend of applying business governance in Vietnamese public higher education institutions, agency problems become an important issue that the public higher education institutions have to face. There are many ways to reduce agency problems, and one of them is to take advantage of the internal audit system. The paper reviews the literature on the relationship between agency theory and internal audit in public higher education institutions, which is quite rare. This study analyzes the case of Vietnam, a country where university governance system has had a lot of changes in recent times with the development of autonomy mechanism. The research raises the importance of internal audit function in university governance and provides policy implications for regulators and university administrators by adopting internal audit to reduce agency problems.