Which control activity involves ensuring tasks are correctly divided among staff?

The correct answer is associated with the segregation of duties, which is a fundamental control activity within internal accounting systems. This principle emphasizes the importance of dividing responsibilities among different individuals to reduce the risk of errors or fraud. When tasks are appropriately divided, it ensures that no single individual has control over all aspects of a transaction or process. This distribution of duties enhances accountability and creates a system of checks and balances.

By implementing segregation of duties, an organization can effectively minimize the risk of misappropriation of assets or manipulation of financial information. For example, the person responsible for processing transactions should be different from the person who reviews or authorizes those transactions. This separation helps to prevent any one person from having the ability to carry out and conceal wrongdoing.

In this context, other control activities such as physical controls, authorization, and management oversight serve different functions. Physical controls focus on safeguarding assets, authorization pertains to granting permissions for various actions or transactions, and management oversight involves monitoring processes and outcomes to ensure they align with the organization’s objectives. While all these activities are essential in internal control systems, the specific act of ensuring that tasks are correctly divided among staff distinctly defines segregation of duties.