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This study explores key governance, leadership and management activities that have impact on quality, risk and safety within Australian healthcare organisations.

Current non-executive directors (n = 12) of public and private health boards were interviewed about contemporary approaches to fiduciary and corporate responsibilities for quality assurance and improvement outcomes in the context of risk and safety management for patient care. Verbatim transcripts were subjected to thematic analysis triangulated with Leximancer-based text mining.

Boards operate in a strong legislative, healthcare standards and normative environment of quality and risk management. Support and influence that create a positive quality and risk management culture within the organisation, actions that disseminate quality and risk broadly and at depth for all levels, and implementation and sustained development of quality and risk systems that report on and contain risk were critical tasks for boards and their directors.

Findings from this study may provide health directors with key quality and risk management agenda points to expand or deepen the impact of governance around health facilities' quality and risk management.

This study has identified key governance activities and responsibilities where boards demonstrate that they add value in terms of potential improvement to hospital and health service quality care outcomes. The demonstrable influence identified makes an important contribution to our understanding of healthcare governance.

This study seeks to explore how non-executive directors address governance problems on Dutch two-tier boards. Within this board model, challenges might be particularly difficult to address due to the formal separation of management boards' decision-management from supervisory boards' decision-control roles.

Semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire among non-executive directors provide unique insights into three major challenges in the boardrooms of two-tier boards in The Netherlands.

The study indicates that non-executive directors mainly experience challenges in three areas: the ability to ask management critical questions, information asymmetries between the management and supervisory boards and the management of the relationship between individual executive and non-executive directors. The qualitative in-depth analysis reveals the complexity of the contributing factors to problems in the boardroom and the range of process and social interventions non-executive directors use to address boardroom issues with management and the organization of the board.

While policy makers have been largely occupied with the “right” board composition, the results highlight the importance of adequately addressing operational challenges in the boardroom. The results emphasize the importance of a better understanding of board processes and the need of non-executive directors to carefully manage relationships in and around the boardroom.

Whereas most studies have focussed on regulatory initiatives to improve the functioning of boards (e.g. the independence of the board), this study explores how non-executive directors attempt to enhance the effectiveness of boards on which they serve.

There is a growing attention toward the importance of women’s participation on corporate boards in enhancing board governance and decision-making quality. The literature lacks sufficient empirical evidence on the relationship between women’s involvement on boards and firms’ risk. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of board gender diversity on firms’ risk.

This paper explores the influence of women’s participation on corporate boards on firms’ stock return volatility. The examined firms are all non-financial firms listed on the FTSE 350 index between 2008 and 2013. The Bloomberg database is used to collect the needed variables. Panel data are employed through a regression model to estimate relationships. One-step Arellano and Bond and the generalized method of moments are used to control for reverse causality and the existence of endogenous variables.

The results suggest that women’s participation on corporate boards favorably impacts firms’ risk by reducing firms’ stock return volatility. The authors also find that the influence of women on reducing stock return volatility is higher in four particular industries recognized by their close proximity to consumers (consumer goods, consumer services, health care, and utilities).

The study contributes to the growing literature on women on boards and offers solid empirical evidence of the correlation between board gender diversity and firms’ risk. The empirical results provide economical and statistical validity to the “voluntary business-led” approach of Davies reports and to the recommendation by the UK Corporate Governance Code 2014 on the favorable influence of board gender diversity for effective functioning.

Given a number of recent and ongoing changes to the role and responsibilities of executive and non‐executive board members of UK social housing organisations, the paper aims to offer a literature review which explores the development provision for board members within such organisations. The paper's key question is: “How are executive and non‐executive board members being prepared for these changes?”

A systematic literature review was undertaken, based on the main business and management databases. This was followed by a thematic analysis to uncover what we know about executive and non‐executive board member training and development within the public and voluntary sectors, in particular within UK social housing organisations.

Despite the increasingly important role of boards in the not‐for‐profit sector, only a limited number of publications focusing on human resource development (HRD) issues were found. The literature did provide some insight into the HRD experiences of executive and non‐executive board members. The majority of papers centred on leadership and governance matters, mainly board effectiveness, performance and “board capital”, rather than human capital. In so far as board member development is discussed, it is mainly in relation to their recruitment to the board and the sort of skills required, with little attention given to matters such as succession planning and member development.

Given the limited extent of research to date into executive and non‐executive board development in social housing organisations, it follows that there is limited knowledge of what is – or is not – happening in practice. This highlights the need for more empirical research, on the basis of which it should be possible to offer suggestions for changes to/improvements in board member development activities.

The paper reviews the current state of knowledge relating to executive and non‐executive board member development in not‐for‐profit and social housing organisations.

This paper aims to review empirical research on the relationship between institutional ownership (IO) and board governance (85 studies).

Based on agency and upper echelons theory, the heterogeneous monitoring function of specific types and the nature of institutional investors on board composition, compensation and chief executive officer (CEO) characteristics will be focused.

The author found that most studies have referred to archival studies, analyzed the impact of board governance on IO, focused on CEO characteristics, neglected IO heterogeneity and advanced regression models to address endogeneity concerns. In line with the theoretical framework, the relationship between total IO and board governance is heterogeneous. However, specific types such as foreign, dedicated and pressure-resistant institutions represent active monitoring tools and push for increased board governance.

The author provided useful recommendations for future research from a content and methodological perspective, e.g. the need for analyzing the impact of IO on sustainable board governance and other characteristics of top management team members, e.g. the chief financial officer.

As many regulatory bodies implemented regulations to promote shareholder rights and board governance, this literature review highlights the connections of both corporate governance mechanisms. Managers should conduct a careful and timely investor analysis and change the composition and compensation of the board of directors in line with institutional investors’ preferences.

This analysis makes useful contributions to prior research by focusing on IO and board governance, whereas the author structured the heterogeneous variables and results within the structured literature review. The authors guides researchers, regulatory bodies and business practice in this corporate governance topic.

Being a director, regardless of the size or nature of the enterprise, is different to being an employee, manager, shareholder or customer. It is not size or dollar value that makes the responsibilities of a board member different from those of an executive. Some, for instance ethical responsibilities, are common regardless of size. One key issue is to do with personal integrity and another to do with the integrity of decision making by the board. The chapter looks at who should be responsible for training the board, and provides a conceptual framework on which training could be based. Practice and example are the key ways in which ethics is learnt, and examples are provided of the way in which case studies can be used to enhance personal integrity and moral courage, and to develop and entrench decision processes in the board which enhance the integrity of its decision making.

The literature on corporate governance has experienced an explosive growth in the past decade and presented some new trends. One purpose of this paper is to make an exploratory survey of this. Since China is a typically emerging and transition economy, another purpose of this paper is to review some domestic studies with an intention to discover the evolution logic of corporate governance practices in China under a complicated and exclusive context, the third purpose is to provide future research directions.

This paper surveys recent literature in the field of corporate governance, intending to find out the development trends and extract the main line of literature on and practices of Chinese corporate governance.

In this paper, we find that recent literature on corporate governance provides some new insights into subtle characteristics of governance, governance effects of relational network, political connections, corporate governance evaluation and financial institutions governance. During the past decade, the literature on Chinese corporate governance has referred to some new areas during the transition process from administrative governance to economic governance. In addition to the above, we attempt to put forward an analytical framework and the proposition that Chinese corporate governance is in the transition process from administrative governance to economic governance.

The authors propose some research topics where future studies on corporate governance may prove valuable, especially putting forward an analytical framework which can be used for discussing and analyzing corporate governance in China.

This paper reviews some new trends of literature on corporate governance and makes a contribution to corporate governance studies by providing fruitful directions, extracting the main line and analytical framework for China's mode during the transition process from administrative governance to economic governance.

The present study was carried out with the purpose of establishing a model of effective board governance in Uganda's service sector firms.

This study is cross‐sectional. The analysis was conducted using Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) software on a sample of 128 service firms in Uganda. The perceived effective board governance in Uganda was measured by the perceptions of 128 respondents who are managers or directors in each of those service firms. Three confirmatory factor analysis models were tested and fitted.

The three‐dimensional model of effective board governance in Uganda – consisting of control and meetings’ organization, board activity and effective communication – was determined to be the best fitting model. Evidence in support of relevant theories of board governance was adduced.

Although plenty of literature on corporate governance exists, there is scarce literature on effective board governance conceptualization and this together with imprecise terminology regarding this area may have affected the authors’ conceptualization of the study. The authors’ study was limited to the service sector firms registered and operating in Kampala, Uganda and it is possible that their results are only applicable to this sector in Uganda. Nevertheless, policy makers of Uganda dealing with financial markets, academicians, company directors, company owners and even general readers interested in the area of effective board governance might find this paper handy.

The authors believe that application of their model should improve the quality of board governance in Uganda and can also apply to other sectors of Uganda's firms to help avert the problem of ineffective boards as evidenced by consistent firm failures in Uganda. By improving the quality of board governance, Ugandan boards will demonstrate their relevance in company direction and improvement of company value to the benefit of all stakeholders.

The present study provides one of the few studies that have analysed with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using AMOS to test effective board governance measurement model and provides a benchmark for Uganda's service firms yearning to leverage the use of their boards.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating effect of intellectual capital on the relationship between board governance and perceived firm financial performance.

This study was cross-sectional. Analyses were by SPSS and Analysis of Moment Structure on a sample of 128 firms.

The mediated model provides support for the hypothesis that intellectual capital mediates the relationship between board governance and perceived firm performance. while the direct relationship between board governance and firm financial performance without the mediation effect of intellectual capital was found to be significant, this relationship becomes insignificant when mediation of intellectual capital is allowed. Thus, the entire effect does not only go through the main hypothesised predictor variable (board governance) but majorly also, through intellectual capital. Accordingly, the connection between board governance and firm financial performance is very much weakened by the presence of intellectual capital in the model – confirming that the presence of intellectual capital significantly acts as a conduit in the association between board governance and firm financial performance. Overall, 36 per cent of the variance in perceived firm performance is explained. the error variance being 64 per cent of perceived firm performance itself.

The authors surveyed directors or managers of firms and although the influence of common methods variance was minimal, the non-existence of common methods bias could not be guaranteed. Although the constructs have been defined as precisely as possible by drawing upon relevant literature and theory, the measurements used may not perfectly represent all the dimensions. For example board governance concept (used here as a behavioural concept) is very much in its infancy just as intellectual capital is. Similarly the authors have employed perceived firm financial performance as proxy for firm financial performance. The implication is that the constructs used/developed can realistically only be proxies for an underlying latent phenomenon that itself is not fully measureable.

In considering the behavioural constructs of the board, a new integrative framework for board effectiveness is much needed as a starting point, followed by examining intellectual capital in firms whose mediating effect should formally be accounted for in the board governance – financial performance equation.

Results add to the conceptual improvement in board governance studies and lend considerable support for the behavioural perspective in the study of boards and their firm performance improvement potential. Using qualitative factors for intellectual capital to predict the perceived firm financial performance, this study offers a unique dimension in understanding the causes of poor financial performance. It is always a sign of a maturing discipline (like corporate governance) to examine the role of a third variable in the relationship so as to make meaningful conclusions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the combined (multiplicative) effect of board governance and intellectual capital (IC) on firm performance.

This study is cross-sectional and follows a positivist view of testing pre-specified hypotheses. The study uses a respondent sample of 128 service firms operating in Kampala, directors or managers are the unit of enquiry. Structural equation modelling with analysis of moment structures is used for statistical modelling.

Board governance and IC make significant contributions to firm performance. However, their interaction is a significant booster to services sector firms’ performance in Uganda.

Although an attempt is made at controlling for common method variance in particular by proactive instrument design and testing, and usage of the Harman single factor analytical technique, its influence may not have been dealt away completely owing to failure to obtain a plausible common marker variable. Well, it is meaningful to identify the significant positive multiplicative effects of board governance and IC so as uncover what is needed in service firms to improve their performance.

Studies explaining firm performance via board governance only and which ignored the synergistic effects of board governance and IC have often missed the reality that the performance of the firm can significantly be improved by means of leveraging IC while simultaneously calling for effective board governance.