The contribution of internal control to corporate governance : the case of the hotel sector[La contribution du contrôle interne à la gouvernance des entreprises : Cas du secteur hôtelier]

Governance is a process led by the board of directors that aims to direct, authorize and control the activities of senior managers in order to achieve the organizations objectives. In this respect, we considered it relevant to conduct a scientific research in this sense while setting as a main research question: "How does the implementation of a strong internal control system contribute to ensuring a good governance model? The interest of this article is to present a perspective on the correlation between internal control and corporate governance. In other words, the objective of this article is to understand and explain the importance of adopting an internal control system to achieve good governance despite the complex environment that is continuously evolving, taking into account its risks and threats. In order to provide answers to our main research question, the theoretical basis of our research is agency theory. Empirically, we conducted an exploratory study through a qualitative approach by deploying the multiple case method. For the data collection, we interviewed employees of two hotel organizations through semistructured interview guides. The results of this research have shown that the establishment of a strong internal control system remains a requirement given the significant contribution of this system to eliminating and dealing with the manifestation of risks threatening the smooth running of the organization's activity, particularly those related to information. In the process of implementing good governance of organizations, internal control has a major significance, insofar as it constitutes one of the most tangible elements and most consistent with governance mechanisms. Our research work has several advantages, however, and like all research work, it is debatable and has certain limitations. Among these limitations, we can mention the deployment of only one data collection tool, which is due to the suspension of hotel activity during the current health crisis following government measures. As well as the size of the sample, as we hoped to conduct our research based on a larger sample in order to have results that are more representative.