Customer Reviews

Beyond Coso: Internal Control to Enhance Corporate Governance

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Excellent coverage of the history of internal control issues. Good analysis of weaknesses/strengths of COSO and the strengths of other control related models. Good explanation of a broader management approach to internal control that the author advocates. Good suggestions for implementing the broader approach in a company and the roles of the Board, Senior Managment and Internal Audit. The author is obviously quite knowledgeable about these issues and the book is easy to read and is very interesting. People interested in developing their knowledge about this subject or concerned about good business and control practices and ways to enhance the likelihood of success for their company will find this book very valuable.

Great overview of its history, and other frameworks for internal control evaluations. Clearly the author has major misgivings with COSO, and describes why the shortcomings reflect the biases of the authors, which is the public accounting firms. Excellent overview of other frameworks, and why they might be superior. With the passage of the Sarbanes Oxley Act, this understanding might seem more important, but likely many organizations will struggle just to do COSO. An important addition to any research on COSO.

Anyone who read this book when it was first published in 1998 needs to re-read it in the context of the Enron revelations. It is amazing how Steven J. Root's examination and explanation of what internal control is, how it should be implemented and what it can and cannot accomplish is exactly on-point vis-à-vis the break downs in corporate governance at Enron, Global Crossing and others of their ilk. Anyone from business student to congressional overseer, who wants the proper framework for understanding and explaining these crises should carefully study this book.

Beyond COSO is probably one of the best, complete and most recent books on (internal) control. What interested me a great deal was that Root behind the masks of the committee of sponsoring organisations looks, metaphorically speaking. It helped me a great deal on writing a graduation paper on this topic.