Impact of Internal Control in Enterprises Founded by Local Self-Government Units: The Case of Republic of Serbia

Abstract

In the countries in transition, like the Republic of Serbia, system innovations are being introduced, such as the implementation of internal controls in enterprises. The authors of the paper formulated a research question which is if the introduction of internal controls could have an impact on the improvement of governance in public utility enterprises founded by the units of local self government. The main goal of the research was to identify possible improvement in corporate operations measured by an increase in revenues made by public utility enterprises following the implementation of internal controls. In addition to that, the secondary goal of the authors was to determine differences in operating efficiency between public utility enterprises and the so called other enterprises that put in place internal controls in their current operations. Further on, the authors of this paper wanted to find out which type of internal controls in place in public utility enterprises and other enterprises enabled best performance. The usefulness of the study is visible in the presented results of the research. Specifically, they indicate significant differences between public utility enterprises and other enterprises, both in terms of implementation of internal controls and in their performance, which was proven in 2018. In addition to that, performance of public utility enterprises founded by local self-government units is found to be better than that of the so called other enterprises after the introduction of internal controls.