ABSTRACT
Introduction Today’s business environment has resulted in a proliferation of vulnerabilities, risks, stakeholders, and activities much more complex than ever before. The blurring of national boundaries, intermingling of cultures, interfaces among computer systems, proliferation of e-commerce activities (whether B2B or B2C), and even the near irrelevance of time zones and geographic distances, have created a need for internal control frameworks. These are structures that organize, categorize, and sometimes prioritize an organization’s internal controls. By definition, internal controls are practices put in place to create value for stakeholders and minimize risks, so frameworks make it easier to manage these diverging dynamics and evaluate the results more systematically.
