Assessing corporate governance practices in state enterprises: a case study of Posta Uganda

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine the corporate governance practices at Posta Uganda. This was driven by the fact that corporate governance practices are mostly the key determinants of Public entities performance and this is widely acceptable by scholars and policy makers. The study was guided by three specific research objectives, which included: - establishing the nature of corporate governance practices at Posta Uganda, assessing the challenges of corporate governance practices at Posta Uganda, and designing appropriate strategies that will minimize the challenges of corporate governance practices at Posta Uganda. The research design used was a cross-sectional quantitative survey, non-experiment, and unit of analysis was Posta Uganda staff. Primary data was gathered from managers, supervisors, and staff using a self-administered questionnaire anchored on the Likert scale range and analyzed using SPSS to generate descriptive statistics including frequency tables, mean and standard deviation. Findings from the study indicated that the majority of the respondents agreed to availability of appropriate board, board provision of management information and insight, adoption of proper control mechanisms in place to guard against misuse and abuse of resources, conducive work environment for employees, the offering of technical expertise to the respective committees, corporate social responsibility were the dominant practices implemented by Posta Uganda with the average mean of 3.9. However, respondents were non-committal on the challenges, which include more significant influence over the board, the board makes decisions that do not favor stakeholders, conflict of interest by members of the board and or executive management in handling the affairs of the corporation, members of the board lack independence in decision making, members of the board serve beyond their statutory/mandated time, limited funding which affects the implementation of board recommendations and corruption. Dominant strategies were; reducing costs on board members, board independence, full disclosure of company affairs and effective risk management systems, accountability, transparency, and limiting political influence. The study recommends that government, non-government organizations, and other stakeholders sensitize public civil servants on the relevance and appropriate ways of implementing desirable corporate governance practices to enable them to operate in the public interest to boost their performance.