Abstract:
Good internal control environment can support a firms strategic direction. Corporate governance, internal control, and benchmarking are the most typical systems that can build confidence to corporate stakeholders. The present study collected data from different sources. A pilot study using survey instruments was conducted with two groups, participants of the CIA training programs and the members of the Institute of Internal Audit of Thailand. After the pilot study, some adjustment was made to the questionnaire and it was used to collect data from the companies listed in the Stock Exchange of Thailand. Also, in-depth interviews were conducted with the internal auditors of the listed hospitals and the listed hotels. Results from two pilot study groups are similar. The majorities of the firms in which the subjects work have their own internal audit unit; have good corporate governance system and a clear internal control system. They reported an independent between the audit committee and the internal auditors, Besides, There are relationships found between the innovative and cost leadership strategies and the quality of good internal control environment as well as the clarity of the three confident support systems. Organizations making strategic decisions will consider how good are their firm s control environment and how clear are their confident support systems which in turns will affect the firms performance and their benchmarking success. Similar or results found in the pilot study, the analyses of survey data from all groups show consistent results that there is a high level of clarity on the three support system. Also the clearer that systems are, the better would the internal control environment of rated and the higher level is the firms benchmarking stairway to success. However, there was no different found between the firms that chose or did not choose a given strategy regardless or the clarity of any of the confident support systems. Results from in-depth interview with the internal auditors of these listed firms indicate that the majority of these firms have strictly followed the guideline for good corporate governance. They use the COSO as their internal audit framework and expand to Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) framework, the internal auditors still focus on financial and operational audits more so than strategy audits. Compliance audits to ensure that the rules, regulations, and legal issues are met diligently are still the primary tasks of an internal auditor, although every attempt is made to incorporate financial and operational risk issues in the auditing process. With regard to must listed hospitals, they are in process of obtaining Hospital Accreditation (HA). The internal auditors in those firms would make effort to be involved with the HA processes so as to reduce the overlapping of audit works as well as to use some quality assurance findings as the starting point for their follow-up audits. Large hotels, especially those being on management contracts with an international chain, will typically have two internal audit teams, one from the property owner side and one from the chain side. The are some overlaps, and yet most of the audit works are again concentrated on financial and operational related issues rather than strategic issues.