Lee, Da Eun 11008075 20 Practical steps to better corporate governance.

Before I read the essay, I thought that this essay would be hard to understand and it would have much professional words. However, the essay was just long and comprehensive but the concept of the paper was just simple and easily understood. I can say that the essay was good because a reader could understand it easily but it was too comprehensive; hence the information is duplicated over the procedures.

The procedure that the research provided was effective communication among people in the company. It talks about that the boards should act their role and be responsible of their action. They should also be open-minded to listen to all opinions of the members because their opinions might be useful in the future and the relation among the members is important. To give this information the researcher provided two procedures. For better corporate governance, nonexecutive directors are also responsible for companys decision by criticizing and proposing their opinions to ensure that the executive boards do the right action. Independence is always important to prevent over power of a group of people. The top management should provide enough information for the boards to be aware of the problems that the company currently faces and the risks that might be rise and they should also provide the briefs for possible alternative actions and compensating actions to lessen the burdens. For this information, the researcher provided eight procedures. For the responsibilities and roles about non-executive boards, boards, and the shareholders were kept repeating over the procedures. Evaluation and reflection of the companys past performance is needed to improve their future action. External auditors should

not render consulting services to their clients according to Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The company should also be responsible for the community and environment and should be liable for damages according to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The company secretary should be productive and effective to provide better corporate governance by being the primary liaison between the corporations directors and management.

When I read through the essay, I could think that most of the procedures seem familiar because I learned those from accounting, finance and management courses. The steps are useful because the company often forgets the importance of opinions from non-executive boards and the important role of company secretary, but I think the twenty practical steps are too comprehensive and the details of the procedures seem overlapped. Generally, the essay emphasizes the importance of the boards, non-executive boards, relationship, responsibilities, and the company secretary. Those aspects can be written short rather than comprehensive so that readers can better understand and focus while reading. However, I think that the useful information is just small relative to the length of the essay. If the researcher wanted to make his essay easier to understand, he should have made the procedures less than ten or just five and emphasize the concept that he wanted to highlight. Or, he could have made the essay comprehensive by putting more new information that readers are not familiar with or can be interested in such as putting some figures or graphs from surveys. Also, those factors mentioned on the paper like risk management, Corporate Social Responsibility, and the importance of independence of shareholders and external auditors can be easily found on the books. I believe that the research should be something new to the readers and should only use the information from books as its reference only. Also, the essay said that the importance of corporate

governance was lightened from the global crises but I think the importance of corporate governance had been already expounded before the global financial crises.