دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی ضعف های کنترل داخلی میان سیاست های متغیر انتخابات وابسته به شهرداری - الزویر 2018

ABSTRACT

In a time when regulators and constituents are growing increasingly concerned with municipal fraud, abuse, waste and inefficiencies, developing a well-designed, effective internal control system is key for municipalities to curb these issues. In this study, the relationship between municipal elections and internal control weaknesses is examined. As elections have been shown to improve public officials’ performance via accountability, appropriate use of elections is expected to have a pivotal effect on a municipality, ultimately impacting the operating effectiveness of the internal control system. Two election variables – election of the Finance official and use of term limits for City Council and the mayor – are evaluated to determine if a relationship with the prevalence of internal control weaknesses reported exists. The contribution of this study is the finding that both the use of term limits and election of the Finance official are associated with fewer instances of internal control weaknesses, implying that these election policies have a meaningful effect on governance quality, impacting the effectiveness of internal controls.

Conclusion

In a time when waste, misuse of funds, abuse of power and fraud are coming to light in the public sector, a well-designed, effective internal control system is important to help mitigate these issues. While internal controls alone cannot ensure fraud will not occur, when operating effectively, a well-designed system can deter these occurrences, as well as help to safeguard assets and promote efficient operations, accuracy and reliability of financial reporting, and compliance with applicable laws and regulations (Thomson, 2015). Contrarily, a poorly designed or ineffective internal control system may breed inefficiencies, waste, misuse of funds, abuse of power and even fraud. Internal control weaknesses can signal instances of these problems within a city government. As reduction of inefficiencies, waste, misuse of funds, abuse of power and fraud are of such importance in the municipal sector, understanding factors that strengthen the internal control system is key. This study finds that cities with elected Finance department heads are less likely to report material weaknesses than those with non-elected leaders. This election variable, which has not been considered prior to this study, appears to have predictive ability in determining the likelihood of an internal control weakness, and this finding provides support for the notion that an elected official performs better than a hired or appointed one, likely due to improved accountability because of the re-election process having a positive impact on job performance. An additional unique result discovered here is that the use of term limits for City Council and the mayor reduces the instances of internal control weaknesses reported, which supports findings in prior research that term limits improve the overall effectiveness and efficiency of an entity. The benefits of term limits noted in prior studies (fresh views, new ideas, rotating out incumbents, avoiding entrenchment, etc.) appear to outweigh the loss of accountability when elections are removed in the final term for term-limited incumbents.