A framework for organisational governance maturity : an internal audit

Abstract

The concept of organisational governance has been researched and debated by many. However, the concept of organisational governance maturity and what exactly this entails has received significantly less attention. It is beneficial for an organisation to understand how far they have progressed with implementing the various governance elements, as this will enable them to implement the most appropriate and necessary next steps, while taking corrective actions in becoming more mature in respect of organisational governance. This will furthermore aid the internal audit activity to provide more effective internal audit services, as knowledge of the level of organisational governance maturity enables them to more accurately determine which service they should deliver – either an assurance (organisation is mature) service or a consulting (organisation is not mature) service. The question now arises: how does an organisation, and the internal audit activity in particular, determine the level of organisational governance maturity without a benchmark of some sort that details the structures, systems and processes required to support governance at various levels of maturity? Published maturity frameworks/models can be used for this, however, there is very little that pertains specifically, comprehensively and holistically to organisational governance. This created the opportunity for the development of an organisational governance maturity framework. The main objective of this study is to develop a framework that can be used for assessing the level of organisational governance maturity within South African private sector organisations. Firstly, a comprehensive literature review was conducted where eight governance-related maturity models were used to produce a preliminary organisational governance maturity framework for the private sector in South Africa. Secondly, interviews were conducted with key governance stakeholders at the selected organisation to obtain input in the preliminary framework. The research findings, which resulted from the data analysed, were used as a means to refine the preliminary framework developed from the literature. No significant amendments were made to the preliminary framework and input obtained during the interviews supported the relevance and contribution of the framework developed from the literature.