Pivotal role of the Unisa council in corporate governance

Abstract

There have been calls the world over for academic institutions to adopt corporate forms of management. Unisa Council declared its commitment to corporate governance in the Annual report 2009. This study aims to detennine whether Unisa Council activities and decisions comply with corporate governance as per the King Ill Code and identify any area(s) of improvement. Case study research was undertaken to investigate compliance with the principles of good governance as recommended in the Code. A checklist was used to collect data from university documents and this data was analysed by pattern matching. Unisa pe1iormance was then compared with that of University of KwaZulu•Natal. Unisa Council performed 91% of recommended practices and thereby complied with 87% of principles of good governance as per the King Ill Code on Corporate Governance. Unisa did not comply with three principles and neither complied nor not-complied with five principles as the level of performance of corresponding recommended practices was below the threshold of 75%. UKZN achieved 91 % performance of the recommended practices and thereby obtained 87% compliance. The study also showed that practicing corporate forms of management to improve academic governance does not necessarily relegate academic interest to lower levels. This means that these institutions delivered on their mandate from the Higher Education Act, 1997 (as amended). Unisa and UKZN are primarily public institutions of higher education and not profit driven, despite them embracing corporate forms of management.