A framework for organisational governance maturity: an internal audit

[摘要] The concept of organisational governance has been researched and debated bymany. However, the concept of organisational governance maturity and whatexactly this entails has received significantly less attention. It is beneficial for anorganisation to understand how far they have progressed with implementing thevarious governance elements, as this will enable them to implement the mostappropriate and necessary next steps, while taking corrective actions inbecoming more mature in respect of organisational governance. This willfurthermore aid the internal audit activity to provide more effective internal auditservices, as knowledge of the level of organisational governance maturityenables them to more accurately determine which service they should deliver –either an assurance (organisation is mature) service or a consulting (organisationis not mature) service.The question now arises: how does an organisation, and the internal audit activityin particular, determine the level of organisational governance maturity without abenchmark of some sort that details the structures, systems and processesrequired to support governance at various levels of maturity? Published maturityframeworks/models can be used for this, however, there is very little that pertainsspecifically, comprehensively and holistically to organisational governance. Thiscreated the opportunity for the development of an organisational governancematurity framework.The main objective of this study is to develop a framework that can be used forassessing the level of organisational governance maturity within South Africanprivate sector organisations. Firstly, a comprehensive literature review wasconducted where eight governance-related maturity models were used toproduce a preliminary organisational governance maturity framework for theprivate sector in South Africa. Secondly, interviews were conducted with keygovernance stakeholders at the selected organisation to obtain input in thepreliminary framework. The research findings, which resulted from the data analysed, were used as a means to refine the preliminary framework developedfrom the literature. No significant amendments were made to the preliminaryframework and input obtained during the interviews supported the relevance andcontribution of the framework developed from the literature.

[发布机构] University of Pretoria