A) ENTERPRISES/INSTITUTIONS

The following criteria are the core considerations in the assessments of nominated private enterprises and public institutions for awards:

1) Corporate governance practice

Adherence to good corporate governance practice has been established as crucial to the good fortunes of a company, especially following the revelations that emerged from the recent financial sector clean up in Ghana. Indeed, the 2019 Companies Act pays close attention to adherence to best practice with regards to corporate governance and so do we. Therefore good corporate governance counts as one of our key assessment factors, particularly with regards to board/management relations and delegation of managerial duties to competent subordinates as well as relationships with staff, shareholders and other stakeholders such as financiers, suppliers etc.

2) Regulatory compliance

The degree of compliance of a company to legal requirements could be regarded as a part of good corporate governance but due to the generally poor level of compliance by many member companies of corporate Ghana – including those active in the Ashanti Region - we have elected to treat it as a separate aspect for the purposes of this award scheme. As with business ethics we regard the degree of regulatory compliance as a direct reflection of the stance of the CEO and therefore we use the compliance levels of the company to assess the quality of its CEO. Simply put, the higher the degree of regulatory compliance the higher the score of the CEO with regards to his/her managerial quality.

3) Corporate/Institutional Performance

This obviously is a key criterion, corporate/institutional performance, in this case being measured by the following quantitative key performance indicators: i) Revenue growth
ii) Profitability growth
iii) Gross Profit margins
iv) Returns on capital employed
v) Returns on assets
vi) Returns on equity
vii) Balance sheet growth

However, because most of the nominations are for private companies whose financial statements are not readily available, in some cases not all these KPIs can be used. Consequently we use only the available KPIs without penalizing nominations for not having the unavailable ones forwarded to us. While this may have a distortionary effect, we consider it the most fair way to proceed with this aspect of our assessments. Nevertheless, where a nominee is found to have deliberately hidden a KPI from the organizers because it is perceived to be unfavourable to the assessment of the nominee, that KPI is included in the assessment with the nominee deemed to have scored zero in that particular KPI.

4. Business Ethics
The degree of corporate integrity adhered to by an enterprise/institution is a major consideration. Since good business ethics is a desired manner of corporate behavior, our assessments of nominations for these awards include the consideration of the degree to which the enterprise/institution adheres to proper business ethics, particularly the integrity with which it is managed and with which it deals with both business counterparties and its customers.

5.) Corporate Social Responsibility
Nominees are assessed based on their CSR activities, Jurists are instructed to consider CSR spend as a proportion of total revenues and a qualitative assessment of the impact of CSR on the targeted beneficiaries, the latter taking into consideration of the size of the beneficiary groups, with extra points being given to interventions that target women, children and people with disabilities.

Each shortlisted nomination is discussed by the awards jury in order to share perspectives, except in the case of corporate/institutional performance assessment which is entirely quantitative and indeed is handled by our research consultants rather than the awards jury.

After the sharing of perspectives, each juror assigns his or her own score for each aspect. However where an individual jurors score is more than one-third higher or lower than the average for that nominee in a particular aspect a joint review is held and where the other jurors consider it necessary a reassessment is called for by the juror whose score is so markedly different. But if the juror stands his or her ground, it is accepted for the sake of cohesion within the Jury as a group.