Corporate Governance and Reporting in Contexts of Social Justice and Equity, Deconstructing the Case of Historically Disadvantaged Universities in South Africa

*Valindawo Valile M. Dwayi*

*"Human society has not developed in accordance with a prearranged plan, but empirically, in the course of a long, complicated and contradictory struggle ". Trotsky, 1986.*

#### **Abstract**

Historically disadvantaged universities in South Africa seem to grapple with corporate governance reporting issues, which continue to engender a state of perpetual crisis for them. In response, the National Department of Higher Education and Training has had to come up with interventions such as replacing university councils by administration regimes. The objective of this study was to examine and critique the underlying conditions that allow for the governance crisis to continue unabated while the government interventions seem to be in place. I adopted a mixed method approach to structure the study coherently and logically. Data sources were predominantly institutional reports about the selected cases, which remain as public records. By employing a critical realist lens and its positions about deep ontology, stratified reality, emergence and multi-causation, I could deconstruct the concept of corporate governance as generally written about in the mainstream literature. Results suggest that the source of the crisis derives from the complexity about corporate governance and reporting in relation to not only roles and responsibilities but also in terms of the ideas, beliefs, and values thereof, which therefore constitute the contradictions of position and practice. The discussion highlights the value of understanding transformative agency as the practical alternative to what should be advances in corporate governance and reporting.

**Keywords:** King IV report, social justice and equity, transformative agency, leadership Management and Governance, historically disadvantaged universities

### **1. Introduction**

This article begins by exploring the construct of corporate governance as it is beginning to gain traction in the transformation project in South Africa

post-constitutional democracy. While corporate governance takes flack within the debates about the managerialist practices, which are considered foreign in university leadership, management and governance, its value becomes apparent when the logic of university and its inherent weaknesses are laid bare against the perpetual crisis that the sector continues to experience. The argument that I advance in this article is that the conceptualization of corporate governance and reporting (CGR) ought to embrace the alternatives to what seems to be the mainstream narratives thereof if this concept is to remain context-based and culturally relevant. Such alternative understandings should include a concern with the mechanisms that seem to generate what is observable and experienced as governance crisis. It should focus on the underlying conditions for corporate governance and reporting if sustainable solutions are to be found about the enduring dysfunctional institutional cultures**.** The reality about the current practices is when the mainstream theories might be complicit in perpetuating structural disadvantage. This is the case when the claims about the KIV Code of Corporate Governance mask the actual reality due to de-ontological positions and self-referential explanations about the subject. It is therefore based on this argument that I would further claim that, only when drawing from the powerful theories about CGR that we might be able to have a better perspective about the present developments and in ways that the future practices can be more transformative than reproductive. Such theories ought to be able to resolve the CGR complexity. The failure to thinking in terms of the latter will inadvertently reinforce the current situation in the following three mutually inclusive ways:


In the rest of this Chapter, I pursue this argument by discussing corporate governance and leadership practices as the matrix of power, which engender more of the continuities than the discontinuities from the old regimes of order and of truth. Such a discussion seeks to explain how such practices derive from the de-ontological positions and self-referential explanations. Second, I introduce the realist social framework to demonstrate how deep ontology and the value of a corporate governance as relations of power and knowledge offer a powerful explanation about corporate governance and reporting. Third, I draw on the realist framework to analyze corporate governance and reporting practices as cited from few selected cases. Such an analysis therefore takes a critical discourse approach whereby both structural systems and cultural systems are delineated as the generative mechanisms for the reproductive outcomes. Fourth and finally, the discussion highlights the value of understanding transformative agency as the practical alternative to what should be advances in corporate governance and reporting.

*Corporate Governance and Reporting in Contexts of Social Justice and Equity, Deconstructing... DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101188*
