The relationship between internal control system and business survival in the COVID-19 pandemic era

The necessity for survival has grown increasingly prominent as an overriding goal of every corporate organization in this COVID-19 pandemic period. The purpose of this paper was to investigate the relationship between internal control systems and business survival in the face of the current pandemic. A descriptive survey research design was used for the investigation. Primary data were obtained from a sample of 382 SMEs’ owners chosen at random from a population of 8,395 registered SMEs in Lagos State using a simple random sampling technique. The data gathering instrument was a five-item Likert scale questionnaire. Two hundred and thirty copies of the scale were returned and used in the study, representing a 60.20 percent survey response rate. Pearson correlation was used to test the hypotheses. The study’s findings revealed a positive relationship between internal control systems and business survival in the pandemic era. It was determined that internal control systems were a successful instrument for organizational control and commercial survival during the pandemic era. Accordingly, the study recommended that business owners should ensure that a vibrant internal control system is put in place to aid management in effective control of the organization especially in pandemic era to ensure business survival.