How Do Companies Perceive the Role of the Audit Committee? A Structured Analysis of the Literature

Although the importance of the audit committee (AC) in corporate governance is widely recognized, the way in which management perceives its role and organizational utility remains insufficiently explored in academic literature. This study departs from the observation that the actual effectiveness of the audit committee does not follow automatically from its formal existence, but is rather conditioned by management’s perception of its organizational utility. The specialised literature has primarily addressed structural dimensions such as member independence, financial expertise, and meeting frequency, while largely neglecting the way in which company management understands and capitalises on the AC’s role in practice. To address this gap, the study conducts a synthesis of the academic literature through a Structured Literature Review (SLR) methodology, analysing a set of 15 studies selected from a total of 242 articles indexed in Web of Science. The analysis seeks to answer three research questions concerning the conceptualization of the audit committee’s role from a managerial perspective, the extent to which the literature explicitly addresses the perception of its organizational utility, and the main theoretical and empirical gaps identified. The findings indicate that the literature continues to frame the audit committee predominantly as a compliance instrument, while the internal management perspective remains insufficiently explored. Three major gaps are identified: the absence of direct examination of managerial perception, the treatment of the AC as a formal structure rather than an organizational actor, and the insufficient documentation of its involvement in sustainability and ESG oversight. The study contributes a structured analytical framework to support future empirical research focused on AC effectiveness within corporate governance.