The paper presents an attempt to quantify the compliance of Greek companies with international best practices. Based on 37 indicators (composed out of 54 questions) it was found that Greek companies demonstrate a fairly satisfactory degree of compliance with OECD guidelines. Their weak points lie in: the role of stakeholders and corporate social responsibility; the organisation of CG; the effective role of the independent members of the board (which may be attributed to the small size of the pool of potential independent board members); disclosure of remuneration; and risk management. Methodologically, the merit of the exercise lies in its approach towards the creation of "collectively subjective" weightings, an effort to discuss the benefits of separating the rating of the market from the rating of companies and the discussion on typologies of work that can be effectively performed through rating exercises. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2004.

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PurposeCorporate governance (CG) has mainly focused on highly dispersed corporations. This paper has two objectives: to enrich the debate in this area and to contribute to the increasing body of literature by exploring the CG of the listed family firms in Greece; and to place the CG practices of Greek family firms within the international debate, especially in the framework of a small open capital market. In addition, this paper presents an attempt to quantify the compliance of family firms with international best practices.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology consisted of the creation of a questionnaire reflecting the Greek CG code and other well‐regarded CG codes, like the OECD principles. The authors constructed a CG rating system and applied it to distinguish family from non‐family firms.FindingsThe main conclusion is that the family firms lack an efficient CG mechanism and they demonstrated poor governance compared with non‐family firms.Practical implicationsThe results disclose the potential strengths and weaknesses of the existing CG framework of the family‐owned firms. The methodology applies in a small open economy and may have significant implications in other similar capital markets.Originality/valueMethodologically, the merit of the exercise lies in its approach toward the creation of “collectively subjective” weightings, and is valuable to policymakers and academics.

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Purpose – To attempt to relate the mean returns and price volatility of a selected sample of 30 companies listed in Athens stock exchange (ATHEX), to the introduction of the legal framework concerning corporate governance. Design/methodology/approach – The essence of this approach is segmenting our whole sample into three subsamples with their key dates being the actual dates on which two legal frameworks related to the corporate governance has been introduced, we perform mean and variance equality tests to assess whether stock market returns and price volatility change, in a statistically significant way, in the three sub-periods. Findings – From our empirical study, it can be concluded that the volatility has been altered both during the sample periods used and the companies for which our methodology has been implemented. Research limitations/implications – Our empirical research can be further extended including a larger sample of companies in order to draw more safe conclusions. In addition, and although our argument for high liquidity for selecting our sample of companies is rational, we believe that our research can be further enriched by first constructing a ranking for all listed companies based on various corporate governance measures. Practical implications – One of the reasons that may have impacted on the volatility may be the introduction of corporate governance; however, other factors may have also resulted to lower volatility, argument that can be further researched in future studies. Originality/value – This paper provides evidence on the relation between volatility and corporate governance. The implication is that the volatility has been altered during the period under investigation.