Towards an Electronic Monitoring, Observation and Compliance Framework for Corporate Governance Using Business Process Management Systems

Corporate governance has been heavily criticised, because of governance failures in companies across the globe. In response to these failures, legislative and regulatory changes have been introduced. However, skeptics argue that compliance with these legislative and regulatory acts is costly and time consuming, causing overregulation. Furthermore, many regulatory measures lack business value and there is no guarantee that adherence to these measures can be enforced. This article presents an argument for better utilisation of electronic means and specifically, business process management systems (BPMS), in support of good corporate governance. Through the application of Orlikowski’s theory of “technologies-in-practice” as the theoretical underpinning of the study and collection of data from a BPMS vendor company and seven BPMS user companies in South Africa, an electronic monitoring, observation and compliance framework for corporate governance is proposed.