Kenya has a wide range of laws and policies meant to promote good governance, accountability and responsible management of public institutions. But having rules in place does not always guarantee that they will be followed, according to Institute of Certified Secretaries Vice Chairperson Wyne Mutuma.
Speaking on Radio Generation on Thursday, Mutuma said the effectiveness of an organisation depends not only on the laws and resources available but also on how its leadership, governance structures and institutional culture operate in practice.
So, what does governance mean, and why can institutions struggle even when the rules are already in place?
Mutuma described governance as the way an organisation is directed and controlled.
“Governance, put simply, is how an entity is directed and controlled,” he said, explaining that it includes an organisation’s “systems, its policies, its practices, its structures, and how it all comes together to direct this entity”.
This means governance goes beyond having written policies. It also involves who makes decisions, how those decisions are implemented and whether leaders and institutions are held responsible for their actions.
According to Mutuma, one of the first areas to examine is leadership.
He said the governance of state-owned enterprises can be affected by decisions on who sits on boards and who is appointed to lead the organisations.
“It starts from the beginning who you get onto the board, who is actually the leader,” he said.
The quality of leadership and the decisions made at the top can therefore shape how an organisation operates, including how it applies its policies and manages its resources.
Mutuma also pointed to institutional culture as another major part of governance.
He described culture as what people actually do within an organisation, including practices that may not appear in official policies or regulations.
“culture is actually what you do,” he said.
This creates a difference between what an organisation says in its policies and what happens in everyday operations. An institution may have rules requiring accountability and responsible conduct, but those rules may have little effect if its normal practices do not support them.
Mutuma also discussed how government-owned enterprises should be managed, citing Singapore and China as examples in his comparison.
He said the approach should be to expose state-owned enterprises to market forces and allow their performance to be tested through competition rather than repeatedly supporting entities that cannot remain competitive.
He linked this thinking to Kenya's Government Owned Enterprises Act, saying its philosophy was intended to push state entities “out into the reality of the market” and establish whether they could compete.
“If you can’t compete, then you’re thrown out,” he said.
His argument raises a wider governance question: whether public resources should continue supporting state-owned entities that struggle to operate competitively, or whether such organisations should face greater market pressure.
Mutuma used Singapore to illustrate the difference between having rules and following them in everyday life.
He questioned why the same Kenyan citizen might behave differently when subject to public rules in Singapore compared with Kenya, particularly in areas such as keeping public spaces clean and obeying regulations.
“In Singapore, the guy will pick up the litter,” he said, pointing to the country's enforcement of laws and policies in daily life.
He argued that Kenya can have similar rules on paper without achieving the same results if the practices and attitudes surrounding those rules do not change.
“It's one thing to have it all written. You may even put it up there,” Mutuma said. “But the lived reality, the practice of doing what you're meant to do comes from another space.”
For Mutuma, the governance challenge is not necessarily about a shortage of laws, policies or information.
He argued that ethical conduct is central to whether governance systems work, particularly in areas such as accountability, transparency and responsibility.
“It is not an information deficit gap that we say we need another code,” he said. “You're doing it because you have an ethical deficit.”
The argument suggests that continuously creating new rules may not solve governance problems if existing ones are not properly followed or enforced.
Mutuma's central argument is that governance reform cannot stop at drafting laws and policies.
For rules to have an impact, institutions also need effective leadership, accountable boards, strong organisational structures, a culture that supports responsible conduct and systems that ensure policies are applied in everyday operations.
The challenge, therefore, is not simply whether Kenya has the right governance frameworks, but whether those frameworks are reflected in how public institutions and state-owned enterprises are actually run