Accountability in business can be a means to improve results
There is a constant pressure on management from all
stakeholders to conduct business with accountability, integrity, ethics
and transparency. The Governance components should comply with the various
multijurisdictional compliance mandates that continue to derail successful
business operations, so we can prevent and detect such conduct to better
their bottom lines. In this essay, we focus on Accountability.
Albert Einstein famously said: "Not
everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be
counted counts." However corporate and personal accountability is driving
the shift from a control oriented corporate environment to a result oriented
corporate environment where functions of actions taken determine the results
or failures.
In organizations where accountability is working the right way and is
embedded as part of the key governance principles, means that accountability
is to be answerable for decisions and having appropriate mechanisms in
place to ensure that the agency adheres to all applicable standards;
- Opportunities - organisation-wide understanding of performance
and behavioural expectations, through effective communication and
the implementation of best practice management practices
- Supply chain - quality service delivery through effective
GRC program and resource management, for monitoring, reviewing and
reporting all processes
- Enhancement - improving organisational and individual performance
through analysis, intervention, capacity building and internal control
mechanisms
- Risk management - managing risks within the business through
the adoption of an enterprise risk management roadmap and framework,
as an integral part of the daily governance activities.
Investors and other stakeholders are now demanding more disclosures, improved
transparency and personal and corporate accountability. This engagement
requires organisations to update their accountability processes that reflect
the inner workings of the business operations. Further, stakeholders wish
to know the business impact on the environments in which they operate.
The truly accountable person or the organisation management takes the
appropriate actions, report on circumstances, to produce the intended
results with the Governance component of accountability - leadership that
must be ready to account for.
See another article in this newsletter; Accountability
and Transparency are the two sides of the Governance coin.
