Lack of a holistic vision is exactly what must be remedied if full and proper accountability from management to board and owners is to be established, say the authors - Caroline Oliver, International Consultant on Effective Governance, Canada and John Carver, Adjunct Professor, Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto.Faced with the challenge of getting corporate governance right, governments, regulators, stock exchanges and other key influencers have developed a wide array of laws, codes and good practice guidelines to add to the considerable number of such prescriptions that were already there.
In the US, the last two years have brought the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, new rules from the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, the Breeden Report, the Business Roundtable's Principles of Corporate Governance, the Council of Institutional Investors' Corporate Governance Policies and recommendations from the National Association of Corporate Directors. In the UK, boardroom bookshelves have been supplemented with the Combined Code from the Financial Reporting Council, the Smith Report, the Higgs Report, a statement of principles from the Institutional Shareholders' Committee and the Hermes Principles.
In India, the Department of Company Affairs (DCA) announced in January 2003 that it was planning to create a National Institute of Corporate Governance to ensure professionalism and adherence to ethical standards in companies. The Institute of Company Secretaries of India is organizing its third `ICSI National Award for Excellence in Corporate Governance', and we have the reports of the Naresh Chandra Committee on Corporate Audit and Governance constituted by the DCA and a Committee on Corporate Governance constituted by the Securities and Exchange Board of India under the Chairmanship of N R Narayana Murthy.
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