SMIDT, Louis (Dr)
Institution:
Tshwane University of Technology
Department/Unit:
Audit
Country:
South Africa
Field of study:
Qualifications:
PhD in Auditing M.Com in Auditing B.Com (Hons) Internal Audit B.Com Financial Management Certified Internal Auditor Certified Risk Management Assurance Professional Memberships: ISACA IIA
PhD Institution:
University of the Free State
PhD country:
South Africa
PhD dissertation title:
A aturity level assessment of the use of generalised audit software by internal audit functions in the South African Banking Indsutry
Current research interests and projects:

Information Systems Auditing Data analytics and Internal auditing Artificial Intelligence and Internal Auditing Corporate Governance Risk Management

ORCID ID:
0000-0003-0362-1075
Selected publication 1:
Smidt, Pretorius and van der Nest 2022. Current use of the risk register to integrate strategy and risk-and performance management: A case of a university of technology in South Africa. Journal of Accounting, Finance and Auditing studies 8(4):65-82.
Selected publication 2:
Smidt, Steenkamp, van der Nest, Lubbe and Ahmi 2021. Assessment of the Purpose of the use of GAS: A perspective of internal audit functions in Australia. International Journal of Information Systems in the Service Sector, 13(2):65-82.
Selected publication 3:
Smidt, Steenkamp, van der Nest, Lubbe and Ahmi 2019. A maturity level assessment of generalised audit software: Internal Audit Functions in Australia. Australian Accounting Review, 29(3):516-531.
Selected publication 4:
Smidt, Steenkamp, van der Nest, Lubbe and Ahmi 2019. A maturity level assessment of generalised audit software: A survey of Internal Audit Functions in the federal government of Canada. (SAAA Biennial International Conference – Conference proceedings - June 2019). Note: Also received the Runner-up Best Paper award in the Category of Auditing. ISBN Number 978-0-6399544-1-7.
Selected publication 5:
Smidt, van der Nest & Lubbe. 2015. Mitigating strategies for sampling risks to enhance the reliability of the internal audit opinion. The South African Journal of Accountability and Auditing Research (February 2015) - ISSN/ISBN Number 1028-9011.
Selected publication 6:
Smidt, LA. The use of sampling and CAATs within Internal Audit Functions in the South African Banking Industry (CISTI – International Conference proceedings - June 2014) - ISSN/ISBN Number 978-989-98434-2-4.
Capstone assignment title:
Doctoral Supervision - A personal reflection of the current realities and challenges as experienced by supervisors and students
Capstone assignment abstract:

In an era where there is an increased demand in the number of postgraduate students that aspire to become academic scholars, the pressure is mounting on research supervisors to actively engage with their Masters and Doctoral students in an effort to guide their academic careers and research aspirations (Mothiba et al., 2019:123). As a result, research supervisors need to be equipped with the necessary skills to effectively respond to and attend to the demands of supervising Masters and Doctoral students. This is equally true for my own supervisory research journey. I obtained my Doctoral degree in Auditing in the year 2016. It was only from the beginning of 2018 that I started with my own supervisory research journey. To date, I have five actively registered Masters students from the university where I am employed at. In addition, I also have three Doctoral students for which I was appointed as the main supervisor since 2020 from another university in South Africa. My research journey up to now came with a lot of trials and errors as I proceeded on this research supervisory journey. This is one of the main reasons I enrolled for this CREST training course for doctoral supervision, in an effort to improve my own skillset and to hopefully become an even better supervisor to my students. In my opinion, one of the mistakes that universities are making is to assume that as soon as an academic staff member obtains his/her Doctoral degree that it automatically makes that person a competent research supervisor. On the contrary, one can also have empathy for this current practice by universities, seeing that the demand for enrolling for Masters and Doctoral studies are on the rise and a as a result universities are also grappling to respond to this influx of Masters and Doctoral enrolments. Supervisory capacity in South Africa and Africa is of concern. This pressure of increasing the number of PhD qualified staff in South Africa and the number of doctoral graduates is emphasised in the fact sheet report that was issued by the Department of Higher education and Training called: “Are we producing enough doctoral graduates in our universities?” (DHET, 2020).