Search results

In the light of failings of the board highlighted by the mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust public inquiry, this paper seeks to offer insights about how boards in general might develop in order to discharge their responsibilities for quality and safety in health care more consistently in the future. The paper also proposes to examine wider questions about the role, purpose, and impact of boards on organisations.

The paper draws on literature from across the social sciences to assess the evidence for effective board working using a contingency and realist approach.

The examination leads to the identification of three key issues surrounding the construction and the development of boards. First, there is no evidence or consensus about an “ideal” board form. The rationale and evidence‐base, for example for the 1991 model for NHS boards in the English NHS, has never been set out in an adequate manner. Second, the evidence about effective board working suggests that there are some key principles but also that local circumstances are really important in steering the focus and behaviours of effective boards. Third, there is an emerging proposition that boards, including in healthcare, need to embody a culture of high trust across the executive and non executive divide, together with robust challenge, and a tight grip on the business of delivering high quality patient care in a financially sustainable way (high trust – high challenge – high engagement).

The paper argues that it is advisable to move away from a tendency to faith‐based and exhortative approaches to guidance, training and development of boards and that it is time for a root‐and‐branch inquiry into the composition, structure, processes and dynamics of healthcare boards in the interests of assuring patient safety.

This paper aims to examine the impact of board of directors on the performance of not‐for‐profit (NFP) organizations. The study also aims to utilize the six dimensions of effective board performance as suggested by Chait et al., using the theoretical explanations of the resource dependency theory, the agency theory, and the group/decision processes theory. By explaining how these board activities influence organizational performance, we can begin to understand the importance of board influence in determining organizational effectiveness as measured by organizational performance.

For the purpose of this study, organizational performance attributes are used in line with the strategy used by Nobbie and Brudney. The measurement used includes the perception of board members' view of the overall success in meeting organizational goals, increase or decrease in the number of programs offered by the organization, improvement in the quality of service offered by the organization, and the level of satisfaction by the clients with the level of service provided.

The survey revealed that the strategic and the political dimensions have a stronger relationship with the perceived organizational performance in nonprofit organizations as compared to the other dimensions.

Given that the majority of the respondents (30) of the study served in religious organizations, this may have skewed the results toward a certain direction that is difficult to ascertain until other studies compare results across different NFP classifications. This suggests that it is important to repeat such a study with a much diverse group of NFPs in addition to measuring other board and organizational dimensions such as board size, executive perceptions, and organization size, and age.

The efforts to link board effectiveness and organizational performance will remain tenuous at best. This is an illusive phenomenon that will continue to elude researchers as long as the dimensions of board effectiveness and organizational performance remain perceptual. The need to understand the strategic orientation of NFPs governance is even greater as these organizations continue to play a major role in the lives of ordinary people in various communities around the world.

In order to understand the effectiveness of the board in NFPs, this study examines three theoretical perspectives that can be utilized to connect the different dimensions of board performance and organizational performance. In previous research, Chait et al. examined the practices of board members at independent colleges and identified six competencies of effective boards. The identified dimensions are: contextual: effective boards understand and take into consideration the culture and norms of the organization they govern; educational: effective boards ensure that their members are knowledgeable about the organization and the board's roles, responsibilities, and performance; interpersonal: effective boards nurture the development of their members as a working group, attend to the board's collective welfare, and foster a sense of cohesiveness; analytical: effective boards recognize the complexities and subtleties of issues and accept ambiguity and uncertainty as healthy preconditions for critical discussions. They raise doubts, explore trade‐offs, and encourage differences of opinion; political: effective boards accept as a primary responsibility the need to develop and maintain healthy relationships among major constituencies; and strategic: effective boards help their organizations envision a direction and shape a strategy for the future. They anticipate potential problems and act before issues become crises.

The efficiency of cleaning of flux residues after various periods of ageing was assessed by measuring the ionic contamination removed in an Ionograph 500 SMD. The flux residues were removed from bare boards, and boards with through hole and surface mount components. The effect of different ageing temperature was also investigated. The work has shown that there is a maximum time interval following assembly during which cleaning should be carried out. The ionic contamination of aged assemblies with through hole and surface mount components were cleaned with varying efficiencies. The surface mount components were more difficult to clean. The use of brushing and scrubbing proved particularly beneficial for the through hole components. A proprietary cleaner proved more effective than the generic alternatives considered.

The purpose of this paper is to show how boards can get in touch with their value critical stakeholders, those who can make or break the company.

The paper first develops the hypothesis that boards often are out of touch with reality. It then introduces the concept of value critical stakeholders and proposes that boards introduce an outreach program to get in touch with them. For each of the proposed five elements in an outreach program, the paper reviews what boards already are doing to be in touch.

The review of existing practice shows that for each of the elements in an outreach program, there is enough practice available for boards to develop a comprehensive approach to get in touch with the value critical stakeholders.

To prevent a future governance crisis, get in touch and promote long‐term value creation, boards need an explicit program of reaching out beyond the boardroom, not only to the immediate stakeholders, but also the societal stakeholders, who can make or break the company. This paper shows how it can be done.

The paper introduces the new concept of value critical stakeholders and describes how it can be used to help boards get in touch with reality.

Highlights the historical set‐up of Canadian boards of directors, why and how women were first appointed to corporate boards. Examines factors related to women serving on corporate boards, detailing advantages and barriers to the appointments. Reports on a survey of Canadian Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) which considers factors related to the appointment of women to corporate boards. Results indicated the CEOs′ opinions on, for example, how important a variety of qualifications is to the appointment of female directors; the women with difficulties in finding women with these qualifications; preferred candidate profiles; issues which would benefit from a female perspective; effects of women on boards and companies; and the question of why there are not more women directors. Finally, with the survey as a background, looks at why there are so few women on the boards of directors of Canadian private sector organizations; and the future prospects of women as board members.

This research examines the differences in presentation of boards of directors in annual reports. Our sample consists of 472 corporations from the Fortune 500; 130 (342) of these corporations included (did not include) pictures of their boards of directors. The proportion of female directors was 11.0 percent for firms that did not include pictures of their boards and 14.5 percent for firms that included pictures of their boards in their annual reports. The difference in the gender mix of these two groups is significant (p = 0.0002). This indicates that firms with a higher percentage of women on their boards signal this fact to stockholders, investors, and other constituents by including pictures of their boards in their annual reports.

Despite the growing interest in IJVs and their governance, systematic research is limited on the board of directors and their roles in international joint ventures in emerging markets. In this study, we draw from corporate governance research that suggests that the levels of control and collaboration by boards are influenced by organizational complexity. While joint ventures possess several similarities compared to unitary firms, they also have unique sources of complexity given the fact that two or more international partners collaborate within JVs under an incomplete contract. Based on a sample of 114 IJVs, we argue and show four separate conditions that influence the functions that boards undertake as well as how control and collaboration as two separate functions are interrelated. Our findings address calls for research to open the black box of what boards actually do as well as to bring corporate governance theory to new organizational forms such as joint ventures.

The purpose of the chapter is to develop a typology of bad behaviors characteristic of governing boards and to compare the bad behaviors identified in the typology to the governing boards’ expected roles and responsibilities. Several examples of bad governing board behaviors that have occurred at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are explored through the lens of the typology. The author argues that the bad behavior of governing boards responsible for the nations’ HBCUs inhibits strategic planning, undermines growth and development, and threatens the long-term viability of these institutions. Finally, recommendations intended to minimize the impact of bad board behaviors are proposed.

Many large companies in Europe include mainly men in supervisory boards and the women quota is often lower than 20%. In Germany an optional women quota of 30% in supervisory boards was proposed for capital-market-oriented companies in 2016. Some assume that without a gender quota the earnings of enterprises would shrink as male and female members in supervisory teams do not work in such a harmonized and structured way. Others think that a women quota in supervisory boards should be requested by law and should not remain optional. In this context, conducting research and analyzing the impact of the women’s presence in supervisory boards on the success of companies appear as a necessary topic. The present chapter looks at the companies of EURO STOXX 50 in the year 2015 and their success and tries to establish whether this success can be related to the percentage of female members in supervisory positions. It replicates in this way the study of Binder, Alonso-Almeida, and Bremser (2016) which analyzed the relationship between female’s representation in the management board (executive board) and firm performance (measured by earnings before taxes – EBT) of the EURO STOXX 50 companies in 2014. It is in the same time an extension of the original study as the supervisory board is brought under scrutiny.

In this chapter, we have analysed the relationship between the proportion of women on board of directors and firm performance in Norway and Denmark. These countries are, in an international context, considered similar in many respects. However, during 2002–2007, the two countries experienced quite different developments regarding the gender diversity on companies' boards, caused by the Norwegian board reform affecting public limited firms. These changes increase the relevancy for analysing and comparing the relationship between gender diversity and firm performance in the two countries. The results for Denmark reveal no significant relationships between the proportion of women on boards and firm performance. As there was no quota policy in place in Denmark in this period, the proportion of women on boards has been quite constant. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that we observe no significant relationships. The results for Norway reveal first a positive relationship between the proportion of women on boards of directors and firm performance. This relationship does hold after controlling for a wide set of firm characteristics. Can this be explained by the quota? No, our robustness analyses suggest not. The results indicate that the short-term relationship between gender diversity and firm performance is negligible. Neither for public limited firms nor for limited firms, can firm performance during this period really be attributed to women on boards. Thus, from a gender equalisation point of view, it appears that one has achieved increased gender diversity on Norwegian boards, without affecting firm performance.