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This paper aims to reveal the attitudes of internal auditors, towards overall internal audit practices in the post-communist country of Albania. The study presents the current state of internal audit practices in Albania from eyes of the internal auditors themselves. The study will explore the independence of the internal auditors, the level of professionalism they exhibit, the use of international standards, and whether current regulations are resulting in higher quality work in the profession. In order to study these objectives, a 169-person questionnaire was conducted, all participants where internal auditors from public and private sectors in Albania. The research findings of the study reveal that internal auditors can be assessed as independent in Albania, and that the private sector is the most independent. Regarding professionalism, internal auditors are able to detect and prevent fraud in companies. In this paper, we examine the international standards of auditing that are used by Albanian auditors; the international standards are really useful for internal auditors in Albania, even though there is much room for improvement. The number of participants was limited of 169 and analyzed one country. For the future researches questionnaire can be conducted more than one country to have comparative analysis. One improvement needed is the adaptation of the international standards in national regulations. This will make the international standards easier to apply and understand the standards in Albania.

Life cycle costing supports sustainability by stressing the costs not only in the production and selling phases but also considering the costs which are incurred after the sale of the products. This chapter reveals main characteristics of life cycle costing as follows: Life cycle costing also includes production costs which are; (a) research and development costs, (b) marketing, selling, distribution and design costs, (c) and also user costs. User costs have three dimensions: transaction costs, maintenance costs, and disposal costs. Therefore one can simply assert that life cycle costing has a broader approach in the calculation of the costs compared to other conventional costing systems. After introducing the main characteristics and basic definitions of life cycle costing, this chapter will discuss the implementation of life cycle costing in comparison with other conventional costing systems. Following this, we will analyze the link between life cycle costing, waste management and sustainability. Overall review will be done in the conclusion.

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