Abstract: Taking the listed companies in Shanghai stock market in 2015 as the research objects, this paper examines the impact of the industrial heterogeneity and the industrial characteristics of the judging standards for internal control deficiencies on judging standards for the internal control deficiencies. The findings indicate that there generally exist differences in the judging standards for the internal control deficiencies of listed companies among different industries. There exists no significant difference in the judging standards for the internal control deficiencies of the listed companies among the subcategories of the manufacturing industry. The more intensified the industrial competition is, the stricter the judging standards for the internal control deficiencies will be. At the stage that the enterprise has free judging right for the standards and the external supervision is rather weaker, the industrial characteristics are playing an important role in restricting the opportunist behaviors when judging the internal control deficiencies. The supervision departments of the government should not only detail the operation instruction of internal control, but also carry out differentiated supervision in accordance with the industrial characteristics, so as to optimize the quality of information disclosure about the listed companies’ internal control.

Key words: internal control; deficiencies recognition; industrial characteristics; heterogeneity