Analysis of the research on internal control in enterprise resource planning systems

Abstract

Considering the need for organizations to keep their business processes controlled, consistent and reliable, and their strong dependence on ERP systems, it is crucial that the control is embedded in these systems, improving the operational efficiency, increasing security and credibility, and consequently contributing to the strengthening of the internal control systems. Therefore, it is essential to carry out research on internal control in ERP contexts so that control measures may accompany the rapid development of those systems and the increase of their complexity so that the risks associated to their use may be reduced. This paper presents a bibliometric study on internal control in ERP systems and concludes that research on this topic is still scarce. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that the level of research maturity is still very low because the number of publications regarding this subject is extremely small when compared to the number of publications in each of the core topics (internal control and ERP) individually.