First, the main problems existing in the current internal control of enterprises
China is still in the period of economic transition, and the internal management of many enterprises is still in the passive stage based on experience. Internal control is very weak, accounting information distortion, financial fraud and economic crimes are more serious. The internal control of enterprises in China mainly has the following problems:
1. Weak control environment. Control environment is the basis of internal control, which is directly related to the implementation and execution of internal control in enterprises. At present, the weak control environment in China is mainly manifested in the following aspects:
(1) The management of the enterprise has insufficient understanding and weak awareness of internal control. Many scholars and enterprises' understanding of internal control is still at the stage of internal containment and internal control. Many people think that internal control is internal supervision. Some enterprises regard internal cost control and internal asset safety control as internal control, while most enterprises regard internal control as a pile of manuals, various documents and systems. Even if the enterprises have established the corresponding internal control system, most of them are just superficial articles written on paper and posted on the wall for people to see, and there are great problems in the implementation of the system. When dealing with specific problems, the factory director and manager have the final say on major issues on the grounds of emphasizing flexibility rather than following prescribed procedures; Ignoring the existence of accounting laws and regulations, failing to abide by laws and lax enforcement lead to serious failure of internal control. Due to the lack of understanding of internal control in enterprise management, the role of internal control in enterprise management is not deep, and the significance of internal control has not been realized, so the establishment of internal control is not valued.
(2) The organizational structure is unreasonable and imperfect, and the internal control organization is empty. Although many listed companies in China have set up board of directors, board of supervisors and appointed general managers, in practice, the supervisory role of the board of directors is seriously weakened, and "directors" are not "sensible", and often have only a "nominal position" and lack the necessary permanent institutions. For example, in state-owned enterprises after the shareholding system reform, the general manager of the company often serves as a director or chairman, and his power cannot be effectively supervised. Some institutional settings of joint-stock companies have not played their due role, or even have no settings at all. Joint-stock companies only have the shell of modern enterprises. Due to the imperfection of organizational structure and the lack of effective control measures, a large number of "internal friction" has been generated, which has invisibly increased the operating costs of enterprises.
(3) The enterprise system is not perfect. First, enterprises lack corresponding incentive and restraint mechanisms. Second, personnel policies and practices are not perfect. Third, the enterprise system is not comprehensive, and there are no corresponding rules and regulations for all links and departments of enterprise management, which is a serious phenomenon.
(4) Low quality of personnel and lack of integrity. Mainly manifested in two aspects: first, the quality of managers is low, and the integrity is low. Many managers generally have no formal professional training, and enterprises have not conducted management training for these managers. Even if such low-quality managers have the quality of serving the enterprise wholeheartedly, they can't really manage the enterprise because of their limited ability. Because enterprises often closely link the profitability of enterprises with the quality of managers' work, many managers make false statements about costs, income and benefits for their own benefit, and a series of short-term behaviors of enterprises are unconsciously produced. Second, the quality of accounting personnel is poor and the integrity is insufficient. Some enterprises do not pay enough attention to the improvement of accounting personnel's professional quality, which leads to a great increase in the probability of operational and principled errors of financial personnel, such as misusing accounting subjects, changing the corresponding relationship of accounts at will, confusing accounting confirmation and measurement, etc. Especially in recent years, more and more new things have been added to the accounting system, which has increased the difficulty of accounting and improved the quality of accounting information to a certain extent. The lack of honesty of accounting personnel is not because they are willing to falsify, but often because they are driven by interests or limited by status and power, relying on the person in charge of the unit and have to make and provide false accounting information against their will, forming a "stand up, can't stand it; Can't stand it, can't stand it.
(5) Corporate culture construction has not attracted enough attention. Corporate culture is a subculture system with the same values and ideals, the same code of conduct and the same value orientation, which is gradually formed in the long-term business activities of enterprises. Therefore, corporate culture can make enterprises form a kind of interest. In business activities, employees of enterprises use peers as the criterion to restrain their own behavior, so as to adjust the relationship between people. It can eliminate some artificial obstacles and frictions in the development of enterprises and establish harmonious internal relations. Employees are willing to respect each other and respect each other in the process of moving towards the development goal of the enterprise. This kind of cohesion can unite enterprises and strive to achieve their goals. It can not only promote the development of enterprises, prevent the decline of enterprises, but also improve their competitiveness. However, at present, the management authorities of many enterprises in China know little about this and have insufficient understanding of corporate culture. Even if they realize the important role of corporate culture in enterprise management, they are not strong enough in building corporate culture. I didn't realize that enterprises can awaken employees' subjective consciousness and ownership spirit through the management thought of enterprise culture, so as to truly let employees become their own masters and become the masters of enterprises, and better serve enterprises.
2. Poor risk awareness and insufficient internal pressure. Due to the change of social and economic environment, the competition among enterprises is becoming more and more fierce, and the management of enterprises will face operational risks from all aspects, such as financing risk, investment risk, market development risk, guarantee risk and credit risk. However, judging from the current situation of enterprises in China, the risk awareness of enterprises has not been improved to the due height, and it still stays at the level of the seller's market under the planned economy. It has not formed the risk awareness, paid insufficient attention to the risks faced by enterprises, and lacked an effective risk management mechanism. For example, in the Yinguangxia incident, the person in charge of Yinguangxia Group ignored the risks and continued to commit illegal acts, which made enterprises and individuals * * * in a high-risk state. Moreover, this kind of illegal behavior has been going on for many years, and the person in charge of Yinguangxia Group has become more and more daring and unscrupulous, taking illegality as a habit and having no sense of risk at all.
3. Lack of proper control activities. COSO report believes that control activities are policies and procedures to ensure the implementation of management instructions, aiming at helping enterprises to ensure that necessary actions are taken against "risks that make enterprise goals impossible to achieve" and aiming at helping enterprise management authorities to ensure the realization of their control goals. However, at present, many enterprises in our country lack proper control activities, which leads to a large number of fraudulent behaviors and seriously distorts accounting information, thus undermining the normal operation of social and economic order. For example, in the event of Yinguangxia, we found that Yinguangxia's poor control over the environment, the random management behavior of the top management of the enterprise and the lack of appropriate control activities led to Yinguangxia's fraudulent behavior being hidden for a long time. If there were substantial and appropriate control activities within Yinguangxia, such appalling fraud would not happen within six years.
4. Poor information flow, unclear responsibilities and unclear responsibilities. There is a phenomenon in enterprises in China: the information of enterprises is poor both vertically and horizontally, and a lot of information about enterprises is mastered by management authorities, but employees of enterprises know nothing about it. In addition, all departments within the enterprise are fragmented, and there is a lack of information communication between departments. Employees know little about enterprise information and are often confined to their own departments. A good information and communication system should be able to ensure that everyone in the organization clearly knows their specific obligations and responsibilities and their role in the enterprise. At present, employees in many domestic enterprises are not very clear about this, even like a robot, they obey the requirements of the management authorities and do whatever the management authorities ask, regardless of whether their actions are reasonable or legal. For example, within Yinguangxia Group, there is almost no information communication system. It is said that there is no need for internal cost information, payback period and rate of return, and market information. The accounting information system was arbitrarily controlled by the management, and a large amount of funds were misappropriated, but they did not know where to go. Within Yinguangxia Group, information changes with the wishes of enterprise management, and they monopolize the relevant information, which makes the communication of relevant information poor, and it is difficult to expose its illegal behavior, so it cannot be contained in time.
5. The internal control mechanism is not perfect and the control is weak. In order to ensure the implementation of its instructions, the management should formulate various measures and procedures, generally including authorization and approval, division of responsibilities, design and application of appropriate vouchers, appropriate security measures, independent inspection and evaluation, etc. In order to ensure the realization of control objectives, enterprises must formulate control policies and procedures and implement them, and management authorities must ensure that the actions they identify and use to deal with risks are effectively implemented. The biggest weakness of internal control activities in Chinese enterprises is that the assessment and reward mechanism is not sound and effective enough. The plan may be good, but the implementation effect is often poor, because no one checks it, and no one checks it seriously, just going through the motions. No matter how advanced and complete the system is, it is difficult to play its due role without effective control and assessment. In addition, the whole process of internal control must be properly supervised through supervision activities and revised when necessary. Due to the problems of management system and management mode, the internal control and supervision of Chinese enterprises are weak, the management control means are not advanced enough, and the internal audit institutions have not played their due role.
Second, how to improve the internal control of modern enterprises
Through the above-mentioned problems existing in the current internal control of enterprises in China, the author puts forward the following suggestions on how to improve the internal control of modern enterprises:
1. Improve the control environment of enterprises. The control activities of any enterprise exist in a certain control environment. The quality of control environment directly affects the implementation and execution of internal control of enterprises, as well as the realization of enterprise management objectives and overall strategic objectives. To strengthen and improve the internal control of enterprises, we must first pay attention to the construction of the internal control environment of enterprises. The better the internal control environment, the better the function of internal control will be.
(1) Management thinking and management mode. The management style of management, including the types of business risks, the management mode of the whole enterprise, the response of enterprise management to laws and regulations, the importance attached to enterprise finance, and the policies and views on human resources, all deeply affect the effectiveness of internal control. According to the principle of internal control, to ensure the effective operation of internal control, no one in the enterprise can go beyond the constraints of internal control, and any management system of the enterprise must be implemented by them. Therefore, the formulation and implementation of internal control can not be separated from the attitude of management authorities and their business ideas and concepts. Only when management authorities attach importance to internal control, realize its function ideologically, and implement control policies, measures and procedures in practical actions can it help to give full play to internal control.
(2) the organizational structure of the enterprise. Organizational structure is the overall structure and framework system of division of responsibilities established by enterprises in planning, implementing, coordinating, controlling and supervising business activities. The quality of enterprise organizational structure construction directly affects the operating results and the effect of internal control, so enterprises should establish their own organizational structure according to their own business philosophy, business characteristics, business scale and management mode. When an enterprise sets up its organizational structure, it should consider its internal structure, the functions of various institutions and their interrelationships from the perspective of internal control, that is, it should make the internal institutions set up reasonably, have clear functions, communicate with each other and restrict each other, so as to ensure that all business management activities of the enterprise can be effectively carried out through the performance of the functions of various institutions and achieve the expected business management objectives. With a reasonable organizational structure, you need people who are suitable for it to implement it. Therefore, enterprises are required to equip internal institutions with qualified personnel with good quality, sufficient knowledge and rich experience to lead the institutions to perform their functions to the letter, so as to ensure the normal and effective operation of the organizational structure. Furthermore, it is very important to improve the adaptability of organizational structure to adapt to the changing market environment, which is also very important to ensure the effective operation of internal control.
(3) Improve the enterprise system. First, establish a talent management mechanism that conforms to the internal control system, is conducive to selecting and cultivating talents with both ability and political integrity, and is conducive to talents coming to the fore; The second is to formulate appropriate working standards and ethical standards for employees as the basis for assessing employees; Third, establish a system of job promotion and salary promotion with a good incentive mechanism to prevent the phenomenon of judging people by their appearance, employing people at will, cronyism and excluding dissidents; Fourth, formulate corresponding rules and regulations for all links and departments of enterprise operation, establish remedial measures for behaviors that deviate from established policies and procedures in the process of implementing various rules and regulations, and find that there is a mechanism for timely action and correction.
(4) Improve the quality of enterprise personnel. No matter how good the system is, it still needs high-quality people to implement it, otherwise it will not play its due role. Enterprises should improve the quality of enterprise personnel to ensure the effective operation of internal control. Therefore, in addition to setting an example by themselves, senior leaders of enterprises should also guide employees to do things within the scope of ethics. Therefore, it is very important to improve the quality of enterprise managers. Enterprises can also cultivate employees and improve their quality by establishing good human resources policies, which is of great help to better implement internal control.
(5) Strengthen the construction of corporate culture. The importance of enterprise culture in enterprise management will inevitably affect the internal control of enterprises. The internal control system based on a good corporate culture will inevitably become people's code of conduct, thus solving various problems caused by system failure. Therefore, enterprise managers should attach importance to the cultivation and shaping of corporate culture, formulate and implement corporate culture strategies, which can unite the whole enterprise, maximize the role of employees and realize their own value. However, when cultivating their own culture, enterprises should avoid a corporate culture that only focuses on internal and short-term, and maintain a healthy cultural atmosphere to make it consistent with the company's strategic objectives.
2. Conduct a comprehensive risk assessment. Facing the increasingly complex internal and external environment of enterprises and the increasingly fierce competition among enterprises, the risks of enterprises are also constantly improving. Risks can be generally divided into operational risks and financial risks according to their causes. The so-called business risk means that many aspects of production and operation will be affected by many factors from the outside and inside of the enterprise, which has great uncertainty. Therefore, enterprises should establish risk awareness, establish an effective risk management system for each risk control point, and comprehensively prevent and control the operational risks and financial risks faced by enterprises through measures such as risk early warning, risk identification, risk assessment and risk reporting.
3. Establish good control activities. Control activities appear in all levels and functional departments of the whole enterprise, and the control objects involved include people, finance, goods, production, supply and sales. Enterprises must formulate control policies and procedures and implement them to help management ensure that "the actions that must be taken to identify and deal with risks in order to ensure the realization of their control objectives are effectively implemented". Strict internal control should not only effectively control all aspects of enterprise management, but also put all activities of enterprises under economic monitoring, and pay attention to important aspects and links of enterprise management. Surface control and point control should be organically combined, and internal control can play a good role. Enterprises should establish good control activities and formulate control activities for key control points. Therefore, the key for enterprises to formulate control activities is to find key control points.
4. Establish a good information and communication system. In order to strengthen the flow and communication of information, enterprises should establish a good information and communication system. A good information and communication system requires that information can be identified, obtained and processed in time, and can be effectively transmitted vertically and horizontally within the enterprise in a form that is convenient for relevant organizations and their employees to use when performing their duties. Let each employee clearly know the relevant aspects of the control system, their responsibilities and roles, the relationship with others, which behaviors are acceptable and which behaviors are unacceptable, and the ways and channels for others to communicate. A good information and communication system can enable enterprises to grasp the operating conditions and problems in the organization in time, adjust the operating strategies, principles and policies in time, prevent and correct mistakes or improper behaviors, promote the effective implementation of various internal control measures, and be conducive to the operation and development of enterprises. The quality of an information communication system directly affects the efficiency and effect of enterprise internal control, so enterprises should strengthen internal control and establish a good information communication system.
5. Strengthen internal control of enterprises. In order to ensure that the internal control system is effectively implemented and the implementation effect is good, the internal control process must be properly supervised and corrected when necessary through supervision activities. Enterprises should attach importance to the supervision and inspection of internal control, establish and improve the internal audit supervision system, and specialized agencies or designated personnel shall be specifically responsible for the supervision and inspection of the implementation of internal control. At the same time, in order to ensure the supervision function of internal audit and promote the strict implementation of internal control, it is necessary to strengthen the management of internal audit institutions and personnel, improve the quality of auditors, and give them certain independent authority to ensure the independence and objectivity of audit.
In short, the improvement of internal control cannot be achieved overnight. This paper hopes to arouse enterprises' understanding of internal control, pay more attention to it, establish and improve internal control, let internal control really play its due role in enterprise management, and promote the development of enterprises, so as to change the phenomenon of massive fraud, information distortion and financial fraud caused by the lack or failure of internal control in enterprises at present and maintain the normal economic order. Let the internal control system become a sharp weapon for enterprises to resolve risks and create benefits.