CONTRIBUTION OF GOVERNANCE AND REPORTING FATIGUE TO NON-OPTIMAL ORGANISATIONAL PERFORMANCE – LEARNINGS FROM THE SOUTH AFRICAN PUBLIC SECTOR

Abstract

Globally, the world economy has consistently experienced organisational failures, mainly arising from poor organisational governance. These organisational failures resulted in financial losses being suffered by millions of people worldwide. Whilst many scholars argue that good organisational governance promotes successful organisations, others have argued that the governance culture adopted by several organisations may not have had the positive effect of achieving optimal performance. Scholars have argued that public sector governance has consistently failed to deliver the required public goods to the communities. Global service delivery protests evidence these arguments. Scholars have also suggested that poor public sector governance resulted in several international crises, including the global economic meltdown in 2008. Recent economic crises have also been noted in several countries, including Sri Lanka and Ghana. This study was therefore conducted in national departments in South Africa adopting organisational performance management (OPM) as a tool to assist in effective service delivery. The study also explored national departments adopting internal auditing as a mechanism to improve OPM. A sequential mixed methods approach was followed in conducting this study. During the quantitative phase, eighteen national departments responded to a survey questionnaire. The quantitative phase was followed by the collection of narrative qualitative data through fourteen interviews with employees from four national and two monitoring departments. The interviews included deputy directors-general, chief directors, directors, deputy directors and a senior internal auditor. Focus group discussions were held with twenty-two internal auditors from the four departments participating in seven sessions. Thus, 38 officials, in total, participated in the interviews and focus group discussions. In addition, sixty-four documents were subjected to content analysis. The study found that whilst the public sector has implemented appropriate governance measures to achieve optimal organisational performance, several factors inhibited optimal OPM. The main findings from the study were the creation of multiple governance structures, poor consequence management, planning and budgeting non-alignment, outcomes rather than impacts focused, divergence in management’s expectations and actual internal auditing services rendered, and skills deficiency within the internal audit activity. Multiple governance structures have resulted in ineffectiveness and over-governance, resulting in governance and reporting fatigue experienced by organisational employees. Governance and reporting fatigue has led to employee lethargy with a resultant negative influence on organisational performance.

KEYWORDS: Coordinated Governance; Governance Fatigue; Internal Auditing; Monitoring and Evaluation; Organisational Performance, Reporting Fatigue