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The purpose of the paper is to address the issues raised by the author of the paper “The effectiveness of corporate governance in Greece”.

The issues are addressed point by point using additional data, references and analysis.

The paper pinpoints the sources of ineffectiveness of the Law 3016/2002 and states that there is a need for a new set of principles and laws that focus on the real issues of corporate governance in countries like Greece.

To fully comprehend the nature and dynamics of corporate governance issues a survey and analysis broader in scope, more holistic and without any prepossessions must be contacted.

The study provides evidence to policy makers that the previous initiatives were ineffective and a new initiative is imperative in order to establish balance and create the conditions for capital market development.

The paper questions the argument that convergence may be accomplished by the enactment of laws alone and contributes to the growing body of literature that supports the notion that convergence may be accomplished only by the convergence of more fundamental characteristics of a country.

The goal of the paper is to detect any gaps in the legislator's and practitioner's approaches in information systems design and implementation and to evaluate their impact on an organizational and managerial level.

Basic information system requirements are presented for compliance with the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act. These requirements are compared with the provisions made by the vendors (like SAP, Microsoft, etc.) to address the issues raised by the legislators and the OECD's corporate governance principles and guidelines to provide a holistic approach to the problem of corporate governance system alignment.

The questions raised by the author are: did the legislators encapsulate the real essence of the OECD principles and did the ES designers manage to fully cover the letter and the spirit of the law or find a legalist‐normative solution to the problem of compliance (not alignment) with the laws and principles leading to a deviation from the original principles? It is shown that the latter is the case in a number of systems or modules designed to address the issue.

Practitioners, academics and developers‐vendors may alter their perspective of how an information system is placed within the context of the firm.

A new approach in designing information systems is needed in order to comply with the new legal‐regulatory framework and market needs.

The aim of the paper is to highlight the differences between the corporate governance systems in Anglo‐Saxon and Continental European countries, and to argue that legal convergence or isomorphism may become more of a problem than a solution in countries where an issue like minority shareholders' protection is the primary corporate governance problem.

The paper uses a number of surveys to support the trend of legal and ownership convergence in Anglo‐Saxon and Continental European countries. The main concern, in Continental European countries, is the expropriation of minority shareholders by the dominant major shareholders, whereas in Anglo‐Saxon firms the main concern is the expropriation of shareholders by the dominant managers (agency problem). Then it analyses the legal initiatives to determine the appropriateness of the legal framework with the fundamentals characteristics of corporations.

Regardless of the trend for ownership dispersion and convergence of securities laws and regulations observed in the last decade, the main characteristics of ownership structure remain unchanged and the two systems of corporate governance remain distinctively separate. The paper argues that legal‐regulative convergence is not adequate to achieve real corporate governance system convergence. As long as the fundamental differences of the corporate governance systems differ, legal and regulating isomorphism may be the cause of problems and not a solution.

The paper presents an alternative approach in legal‐regulatory framework formulation. It advocates the introduction of a different set of practices and legal initiatives for countries with different characteristics and corporate governance problems.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new approach to designing enterprise systems (ES). The goal is to create an information system that can be more efficient and able to contribute to a more stable and efficient corporate governance system.

The new design approach is based on a retrospective analysis of the evolution of enterprise systems and the emerging business requirements.

The new ES (Holistic Information System) does not diminish the problem of Corporate Governance (CG). The design and implementation of ES, according to modern CG principles and guidelines, can help all parties make rational decisions (through the power of logic and not through the logic of power), facilitate the market for corporate control, the flow of information and hence the efficiency of the CG system.

The new framework can help information systems designers to understand and create a more holistic system. Also, it can help stakeholders understand the role that the ES can play in the corporate governance system and exert influence on managers to adopt an information system that covers their needs as well.

It is the first attempt to merge the theory of corporate governance with the ES theory in order to formulate a new design approach.

This paper seeks to establish a benchmark for the evaluation of the quality of corporate governance (CG) and to detect the factors that affect it in Greece.

An index of corporate governance quality is constructed using binary variables. Data from annual reports are used to identify the mechanisms and practices of corporate governance. An ordinal probit model is used to identify the drivers of corporate governance.

CG quality in Greece is quite low, in terms of international best practices. The main drivers of CG quality are firm size, leadership or power concentration and board characteristics. Greek firms' CG quality depends mainly on the balance of power within the firm, rather than performance or market for corporate control.

Data for the constructed index have been collected from the annual reports, and not from questionnaires.

The study provides evidence that there is a different set of factors that affect CG quality from those in Anglo‐Saxon countries. The paper addresses the issue of the relevance of proposed CG mechanisms to real CG problems. By identifying the factors that have an impact on CG quality, policy makers can focus on them to create a legal‐regulatory framework that can improve the level of CG.

The paper not only measures CG, but pinpoints its formulating factors as well. Furthermore, the need for new benchmarking tools to address the fundamental elements of the corporate environment (i.e. ownership concentration, the lack of a market for corporate control, etc.) in continental Europe is highlighted.

Legislators legislate, but how feasible and effective the implementation and enforcement of these laws are and how congruent with the countries characteristics, is under doubt. The paper seeks to argue that the Greek law on corporate governance (CG) had no effect on the fundamental elements of the corporate environment.

Seven hypotheses are tested using three different econometric methodologies (panel data, probit, and ordinal probit regression).

The paper pinpoints the legal disarrays and their impact on the firm and argues that there is a need for a new set of principles and laws that focus on the real issues of CG rather than the size, structure and leadership of the administrating bodies or the disclosure mechanisms.

The data used have been collected from the annual reports and not from questionnaires. Furthermore, there is no methodology to integrate all seven models to a structured or nested model.

The study provides evidence that there is a need for a different set of provisions than the ones in the Anglo‐Saxon countries.

The paper uses a variety of methodologies and tests seven hypotheses. It takes a more holistic approach.

The purpose of this paper is to look inside the “black box” in corporate governance (CG) measurement, and shed some light on how to construct a transparent, reliable and valid index, considering equally both the academics and practitioners’ perspectives.

A synthesized literature review is presented and a CG index is developed combining the strengths of three different methodologies: the Delphi method, the classical test theory (CTT) and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). This approach helps authors to break the process into separate steps and to select the appropriate techniques to support their decision regarding the norms, the criteria, the variables and the weights that someone should use to construct a CG index.

The authors’ analysis indicates that a well-designed CG index requires a combination of research methods to identify the best options to solve several methodological issues in index construction. For the application of this multi-methodology in Greece, the authors used two equal and independent samples to explore the different perspectives regarding the importance of the index criteria and sub-criteria. This process provides evidence that the opinion of academics and practitioners in Greece tend to converge. Moreover, it is found that this multi-methodology produces the highest variation in CG scores and ranking orders, as opposed to a traditional approach, in measuring CG disclosure, an important issue with econometric implications.

The limitations of this study are associated with the methods used.

This paper provides practical implications for investors and commercial vendors. For the former, it highlights the need to be more cautious and/or suspicious when they use CG ratings, meaning that they should comprehend the base of the ratings models, and for the latter, it demonstrates the importance of enhancing the transparency in CG indices construction.

The value of the paper lies in improved understanding of the methodological issues in constructing CG indices. This is quite interesting because this approach could serve as a roadmap for other researchers.