National corporate governance codes and IT governance transparency

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of national corporate governance codes on IT governance transparency and was carried out by comparing the IT governance disclosure requirements across two jurisdictions Belgium and South Africa using the study by Huygh et al. (2017). The latter focused on these two countries since the South African corporate governance code King III (2009) contains detailed IT governance disclosures, while the Belgian corporate governance code Lippens (2009) does not. Huygh et al. (2017) found that listed South African financial services organizations were more concerned with disclosing their IT governance practices than their listed Belgian counterparts and that this observation held across the board for all four disclosure categories within the IT governance transparency framework. Further analysis at an individual item-level also found that many of the items for which the South African respondents reported frequently could be directly traced to the IT governance principles and recommended practices contained in the King III (2009) corporate governance code. Huygh et al. (2017) attributed the higher IT governance transparency of the South African respondents to the specific reporting requirements of their national corporate governance code King III (2009). Hence the recommendation that IT governance disclosures be proactively encouraged via national corporate governance codes to further enhance transparency.