Corporate governance and the responsiveness of organisations to a change in accreditation standards

ABSTRACT

Accreditation is a main pillar for the educational sector and its quality assurance system. The aim of this article is to study how corporate governance affects the responsiveness of public and private organisations to adopting new accreditation standards. The survey was conducted on a sample of more than 500 vocational education and training providers in the Lombardy Region of Italy. The results show that the responsiveness of the providers to the adaptation of new accreditation standards does depend on corporate governance factors. In particular, the most influential factors are the functioning and composition of the supervisory board. Finally, this work deals with an innovation in accreditation standards: a new rating measure of the level of responsiveness and compliance with anticorruption law.

KEYWORDS:

• Accreditation
• responsiveness of organisations
• corporate governance
• compliance
• vocational education

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no specific funding for this work.