E-Corporate Governance for Long Term Sustainability: An Empirical Evaluation of Shareholders’ Perspective

The phenomenal endeavours undertaken by Ministry of Corporate Affairs like MCA 21 and green initiatives coupled with provisions on electronic voting and acceptance of use of technology in other areas of regulations under Companies Act 2013 have paved the way for electronic corporate governance. This paper attempts to analyze the opinion of shareholders on electronic delivery of documents, electronic voting and, electronic general meetings. Specifically, for electronic delivery of documents, its impact on environment has come out to be insignificant, while level of ease and comfort associated with it and its impact on cost reduction have come out to be the significant variables impacting the opinion of shareholders in favour of electronic mode. For electronic voting, level of ease, no risk of security and no issue of e-votes being less informed have turned out to be the significant variables for the shareholders. For electronic general meetings, their impact on cost reduction and no higher risk of conflicts have been found to be the significant variables influencing the shareholders. Based on qualitative analysis, it has been found that food, vouchers and gifts are the only agenda for the shareholders in the Annual General Meetings. It has been discovered that spreading awareness is quintessential for all the three initiatives. 83.6% of the shareholders themselves have agreed that educating shareholders about various concepts of electronic interface is the need of the hour.