Root influence on public sector audit committee effectiveness: revisiting methodological and theoretical research dimensions

IMPACT

This article identifies six root influence themes of South African public sector audit committee effectiveness. With members’ independence, competence, internal auditing, and knowledge of the business being well documented, the themes of the committee’s own leadership and external leadership are under-explored. Aspects added to the current body of knowledge include accepting accountability for decisions, the chair’s extent of power and having the ability to take a stand against management malpractices for internal leadership. Political interference, the standing of the management team and the interaction between management and the committee are identified as external leadership influencers. Decision-makers, audit professionals and regulators should take note of these six root influences in general and destructive leadership behaviour in particular, to ensure that it is appropriately managed.

ABSTRACT

With corporate governance failures abounding, audit committees’ popularity may lie within their superficial ceremonial function, providing comfort and reassurance for stakeholders, rather than being truly effective in supporting sound governance. Employing an exploratory inductive design, the researchers searched for under-appreciated root influence(s) on audit committee effectiveness. Forty influences were identified—resulting in six root influence themes. The strength of the primary theme introduced a novel theoretical underpinning, namely organizational leadership theory, in particular the phenomenon of destructive leadership behaviour.

KEYWORDS:

• Abductive reasoning
• audit committee effectiveness
• destructive leadership behaviour
• interactive qualitative analysis
• organizational leadership theory
• public sector
• self-interest
• supply side

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).