The role of audit committee on enhancing corporate governance in public organisations. a case of Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation

Abstract

State owned enterprises (SOEs) in Zimbabwe have been perennial loss makers over the years and this has been attributed to weak audit committee structures and bad audit performance. This has motivated the researcher to carry out a study on the role of the audit committee on corporate governance at ZBC. Using a pragmatism philosophy which supports the use of mixed methods in data collection the researcher adopted a descriptive research design as framework for data collection. Data was collected from a sample of 52 employees, management, and executives from ZBC using structured questionnaires and interview guide. Data was successfully collected from the sample through stratified random and cluster sampling methods and major findings were analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Findings from the study revealed that three sub variables of audit committees; audit committee size; audit committee frequency of meetings and audit committee independency have a positive effect on corporate governance. The study concluded that, an optimal audit committee size brings enhanced independence which may reduce scandals and improve overall effectiveness of auditors in carrying out their duties, frequent meetings allow the audit committee to closely monitor the ZBC financial performance and better communication and collaboration between the audit committee, management and the auditors. The study further concludes that, an independent audit committee helps ensure that the company's financial statements are accurate, complete, and transparent and can detect and prevent fraudulent activities within the company. The study recommended that, ZBC should increase the proportion of independent auditors since an increase in their number reduces the chances of financial misreporting, also ZBC should not have an audit committee that is too small which lack expert advice and too large such that. It was further recommended that, there is need to promote audit committee independence in ZBC and other SOEs as a measure to improve control mechanisms