国立大学法人における内部統制 : COSOフレームワークを基軸にした概念の浸透

The National universities in Japan have become business entities since their incorporation in 2004, adopting different governance and management concepts and styles, which mostly originated in the private sector. The main idea of this paper is to examine if the most accepted concept of internal control, discussed mainly in the private sector, has influenced the governance and management of the national universities in Japan.

The concept of internal control has long history beginning in the 19th century in the United States. Internal control has been the main topic of discussion whenever a big company scandal occurs. In 1992 the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) published the "Internal Control-Integrated Framework (COSO Framework)" that has become accepted all over the world as providing the most appropriate and available basic concept of internal control for all kinds of organizations. The COSO framework provides 3 categories of objectives with 5 interrelated components to measure the effectiveness of internal control and can also to be used as the concept or means by which the 3 objectives can be incorporated in the organizational goals. The concept of the COSO framework also has been adopted for governmental guidelines and business practice in Japan. The first appearance of the concept of the COSO framework in public documents in Japan was in 2002 in the "Inspection Manuals for Securities Firms" published by the Financial Services Agency. After then, the COSO framework has provided its definition as a common interpretation of internal control and always as the basic concept of the new frameworks discussed in Japan. For the national universities, the concept of the COSO framework officially appeared in the "Handbook for national university governance" provided by the Center for national university governance and management as a guideline for the newly incorporated national universities in 2004.

This paper also provides results from a small study of all 86 national universities using the mid-term targets to see if any concept of internal control were included. The results show that the concept of the COSO framework has reached all the national universities' governance and management, but not yet with the frameworks considered and published in Japan after the COSO framework. More inspections as interviews or by survey would be helpful to strengthen the results and whole concept of this paper, and which can form part of further research.