CGF: Bringing Global Business together (2012-12-30)

February 20, 2015  3489  3489   

Since 2004, instilling and developing these principles that unite not only individuals within a business, but global enterprise as a whole, has been CGF Research Institute’s primary focus.

Long esteemed as one of the most crucial systems surrounding the functioning of modern organisations, the importance of corporate governance runs through every conceivable major facet of a successful company. In the broadest sense, it is a system that governs regulatory and market mechanisms, and the roles and relationships between a company’s management, its board, its shareholders and other stakeholders, and the goals for which the corporation is governed. CGF (Corporate Governance Framework) Research Institute (Pty) Ltd is entirely cognisant of just how crucial such sound corporate governance principles and high ethical values have proven to be in the constructing of a sustainable enterprise, viewing the concept as one which transcends the boundaries of any individual profession, process, horizon or hierarchy and vital to organisations of all sizes throughout South Africa. 

Established in 2004 in South Africa, the central aim of CGF is described by its company CEO, Terry Booysen, as the desire to, “assist any type of business large small or medium, including government and non-profit organisations -- essentially at the executive or C-suite level -- to understand the various nuances attached to what we term ‘good corporate governance’.” 

To the uninformed, this concept of good governance may only extend to simply complying with those stringent codes of practice in evidence throughout global business: “Through having an uninformed board, an organisation will simply believe that governance is nothing more than following rules and regulations, or separating the duties of some of its executives and calling for more independence, or not taking as much salary and profits from the coffers of the organisation,” delineates Mr Booysen.

“That’s pretty much where an uninformed board may position itself in terms of saying that it is ‘well-governed’,” he explains, and this is where CGF is required to perform some of its most vital, educative work: “Companies will collapse through poor governance, and thus we feel that more than the C-suite needs to be involved, such where the topic is more widely applied and understood.” 

Evidently, then, a company cannot be expected to survive without a firm understanding of what sound governance actually entails, and Mr Booysen makes clear how its principles run so much deeper than may have been traditionally thought. 

It is still true that the topic must focus on the obeying of the relevant laws, and applying recommended governance codes such as King III, but for the modern day company, sound governance is altogether more all-encompassing: “Clearly, good governance is really about the discipline of the business. It can’t be that the discipline is only practised at the level of the board. At best, the discipline of the organisation must be infused at all levels. This must be passed down, from the very top of the organisation to the very lowest levels of its operations,” says Mr Booysen.

Attached Files

• IndustrySA 2.22 MB