Tag: Corporate Governance Framework

Authentic leaders embrace honesty and truthfulness as core principles of their leadership style. They strive to build trust, inspire their teams and foster an environment of openness and integrity. This approach appears to be cut-and-dried. However, in reality, being honest and truthful can be rather tricky.

The times we are currently living in are unprecedented. Covid-19 has once again highlighted the reasons why governance - good governance - is a critical function in a democratic country.

Poor governance practices, poor oversight and a lack of accountability lie at the heart of state capture and the large-scale corporate fraud that has dominated newspaper headlines in South Africa over the last three years. It is precisely due to the weaknesses in the governance structures and systems that dishonest and unethical leaders have been able to plunder state resources and commit fraud.

If we have both internal and external auditors, we have combined assurance, right? Wrong! For the board of directors to claim that they have discharged their obligations to implement a Combined Assurance Model requires much more than just the appointment of internal and external auditors.

A plethora of corporate governance codes has been written across the world, and in spite of their recommendations which inter alia seek to protect stakeholder interests and shareholder value, many governance failures and organisational collapses continue seemingly unabated.

In a world where the interconnected and constantly changing relationships between financial, social and environmental issues are becoming more evident, businesses that remain unaware of their impacts and dependencies on their non-financial relationships attract unnecessary risk. Indeed, these organisations also fail to recognise new opportunities for efficiency, growth, resilience and development.

When boards of directors gather to discuss the top risks of an organisation, it may entail matters such as structurally high unemployment, labour unrest, exchange rate volatility, political uncertainty, unmanageable fraud and corruption, threats of new market entrants or even product stagnation. Whilst there are indeed many more topical risks that may be relevant to the nature of the organisation’s business and immediate environment, it is not common for a board to include the threat of their innovation and intellectual property (IP) being marginalised or lost.

Management guru, Peter Drucker, is often quoted as saying, 'If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage [or improve] it'. Constructive feedback is integral to a process of development, growth and improvement, not least in an organisational setting, and especially in the case of boards of directors.

Organisational succession planning, and the associated management and implementation of such plans, has traditionally been viewed as a long-term, deliberate and well-thought-out process.

The role of a company secretary is broad and onerous to say the least and, if this post is not occupied by a competent person who has the appropriate knowledge and skills; the consequences can be the cause of significant organisational friction.