Project Background:
Faced with challenging financial conditions, companies have focused efforts on essential cost-cutting measures, while also exploring opportunities in emerging markets and developing new products and services for this decade and beyond. With these challenges come tremendous opportunities, and out of the ashes of the financial crisis will rise stronger, more resilient companies. Unfortunately, during the challenging times, some employees become tempted to cut corners and engage in fraudulent financial reporting and fraud.
At the same time, regulators, faced with increased scrutiny for their apparent shortcomings prior to and during the financial crisis, have increased investigative and enforcement efforts to combat a perceived growth in corporate fraud.
Against this backdrop, companies must remain focused on building and maintaining a strong internal control framework. The best global companies of today and the future must make corporate integrity and ethics the centerpiece of their culture – permeating every level of the organization, from the board and senior management down to entry-level employees in foreign subsidiaries. Focus must be placed not only on compliance with the law but compliance with the tenets of honesty, ethics, and highest levels of integrity. Creating such a culture is not easy, but must become a reality for any organization that hopes to compete on the global stage.
Enron, WorldCom, and other huge financial scandals of the early twenty-first century suggested it was not enough to have good internal controls to prevent fraud. Rather, it
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became clear that companies would need a more encompassing approach to identifying, assessing, and managing all risks, including fraud risks. The result was the development of an important tool by the Commission of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) for boards of directors and senior management to manage their entities’ risks, including fraud risks.
Based on the above, you are required to submit a detailed report to address each of the following points:
1. Awareness of globalization and the forces driving it, and how these may affect the organizations to stay focused on building and maintaining a strong internal control framework.
2. Identification of the several global issues (economic, cultural, legal, and demographic) that may affect the organizations to manage their entities’ risks, including fraud risks.
3. Once you have determined the global issues above, you are also required to provide a thorough analysis of these issues and illustrate their interrelated impact on the organizations.
4. Referring to the internal control framework suggested by COSO (known as the COSO Cube), you are required to illustrate how the framework would help the organizations in managing their entities’ risks, including fraud risks.
INSTRUCTIONS:
The arguments provided for the points raised above MUST be in the form of an individually written report. Word count is set at 1800 words (excluding front page and list of references). You may divert from this word limit by a maximum of 10% above or below.
FORMAT OF REPORT (MUST ADHERE TO):
The report should be structured as follows:
? A title page (showing a title for the project chosen by the student, student’s name, student’s ID).
? A table of contents.
? An appropriate introduction relevant to the project’s title.
? Section headings, and if appropriate sub-sections. These are to be considered as your main body. Sections should be in a logical order showing cohesiveness and good
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writing skills.
? An appropriate conclusion at the end to conclude the discussion.
? List of references. Remember that references are required in the body of the text, not just at the end.
? Pages to be numbered.
? Use TIMES NEW ROMAN as the font, size 12, and lines are to be 1.5 spaced NOT SINGLE SPACED, also ADJUST THE LINES IN ALL THE PARAGRAPHS.
DEADLINE:
Both an online (safe assignment) and a hard copy are to be submitted on or before Sunday 14th of MAY 2017. Please note that no extension to this date is permitted, so make sure you plan your time so there is no last minute rush. Assignments submitted after this date will not be marked. However, if you experienced a serious and unforeseeable problem which prevented you from submitting your work on time, you should consult the instructor IMMEDIATELY.
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY:
You should use your own words, not quote phrases from textbooks and lecture handouts. Lecture hand-outs are NOT to be used as sources of references. It is expected that you will use textbooks and relevant journal articles to obtain an understanding of the topic being addressed. If you use textbooks and/or journal articles as the source of ideas for your report, you must provide a reference. On average, 5-8 relevant and recent references in total are considered appropriate. These can be a mix of text books and journal articles. I would not strongly advise you to use articles on untrusted websites as some of these may not be academically trusted sources. Hence, you need to do your own search via the University’s online library and have access to relevant articles and books.
Final Remarks:
? The student who shall submit the best report shall be acknowledged and honored.
? The student submitting the least/worst report would be expected to provide justification for the weak performance.