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Leadership development is a significant issue in public libraries and library administrators debate, among other topics, how to achieve it for the middle-level manager. At the present time, library organizations use leadership and management workshops, seminars, and institutes to assist with managers’ organizational learning processes. Current literature indicates that additional strategies such as career planning, mentoring, networking, acquiring adequate qualifications and experience, professional involvement, and continuing education are used not only to facilitate middle-level managers’ career development, but also to help organizations fill the leadership gaps within their ranks.

Over the last several years, many corporate boards have sought a more substantial role for directors in the strategy‐setting process. The author suggests a proven system for educating board members about company strategy and gaining a more valuable contribution from them.

The author offers a five‐point process for effectively engaging a board of directors on strategy that he developed working together with corporate leaders.

When the CEO thinks through this process and engages the directors, the board and the CEO can enter into a dialogue that leads to collaboration and a greater chance of achieving the goals of the organization.

The author has implemented this five‐step process with a number of boards of directors.

A key beginning point is for the CEO to work out, in collaboration with the chairman and other directors, a year‐long agenda of strategy topics for board meetings.

The five‐step process enables the boards, chairmen, CEOs, and top managers to begin to forge an effective process to engage directors on strategy that will grow stronger over time.

Examines the role of 28 personnel directors on the boards of private business and public sector organizations and offers an analysis of their influence and the factors explaining that influence. First, personnel directors adopted a business orientation directly involving them in business strategy, although this was more emergent than formally planned. Second, successful personnel directors required professional competence in HR proactively contributing to solving business problems. Third, excellent social skills in developing effective interpersonal relations with other board directors was important. A fourth factor was the management style of the MD/CEO including recognition that personnel could make a significant contribution to business goals. Where the MD held a strong people orientation, personnel was likely to have influence, whereas if the MD’s priorities lay elsewhere then the role was tougher, but not impossible.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the link between board of director composition and firm performance. Specifically, the paper argues that board political experience influences the firm’s internationalization strategy as directors with significant political experience provide guidance, resources, and network access that enhance the firm’s international presence. The authors also posit that board political connections would be more helpful for firms operating in high-regulation industries.

The authors tested the predictions using data from 156 large US firms. Data on directors’ background were gathered from SEC proxy filings, while data pertaining to internationalization were obtained from Compustat and Mergent Online databases. Hierarchical moderated regression analysis was employed to empirically test the hypothesized relationships.

The findings provide strong support for the positive relationship between board political experience and the degree of firm internationalization. Contrary to the authors’ predictions, the level of industry regulation does not seem to significantly affect this relationship.

Firms aggressively pursuing international strategy could benefit from having directors on their board with robust political experience. One of the limitations of the study is that the types of international activities for firms is not specified in the study as it might be in the form of joint-venture capacity, strategic alliances or for firms that might be born-global.

This study makes original contribution to the on-going research on board political activity and firm performance through internationalization strategy. The findings suggest that having directors’ with political experience is an important asset in influencing firm’s corporate strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the link between board of directors’ roles namely strategy, service and control roles and ambidextrous innovation. This study also aims to determine whether the independence and gender diversity of boards have mediating effects in this relationship.

On the basis of a quantitative approach, the authors conducted a survey on all Tunisian-listed firms. A partial least square method was used to analyze the quantitative data. The authors also conducted semi-structured interviews with a sample of boards’ members of the surveyed firms followed by a thematic analysis of the discourses to discuss the results.

Results revealed that ambidextrous innovation is negatively linked to board’s control role. The outcomes of this research show also that ambidextrous innovation is positively associated with board’s service role and that the gender diversity moderates positively this link. Findings do not indicate a significant relationship between board’s strategy role and ambidextrous innovation but show evidence that the relationship is negatively moderated by independent directors, while positively moderated by gender diversity.

This research sheds light on the effects of Boards’ roles on ambidextrous innovation and the moderating effect of board’s gender diversity and independence as well. This paper addresses the gap in the literature as this thematic has not been studied, offering key insights with regard to corporate governance of companies looking to achieve ambidextrous innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the impact of network position of independent directors on the decision-making process of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (CBMAs).

With 912 CBMAs constructed by 431 Chinese-listed corporations from 2006 to 2015, the authors provide graph-theoretical methods to quantify directors’ networks and build logistics models of CBMA success and generalized linear model for transaction value.

The authors find that independent directors in central positions of board networks of CBMA significantly strengthen the possibility of success of CBMA and react more positively to large CBMA. The results reveal that state-owned enterprises reduce the importance of independent directors in central positions in assisting successful CBMA, but strengthen the importance in promoting large CBMA. Specifically, majority shareholders counteract the importance of independent directors in central positions in assisting successful CBMA, but improve the importance in promoting large CBMA.

The findings suggest that independent directors in central positions, which are embedded in sets of board relationships and interactions, lead to efficient external corporate governance as a mechanism to facilitate a Chinese-listed firm’s CBMA decision making.

The purpose of this study is to examine the identification and collaboration rhetoric of the Norwegian government and public health authorities during the pandemic. The aim is to show whether and how actors use strategies and themes of identification, and whether they build identification with their publics.

The study combines qualitative and quantitative methods. Six identification strategies were identified through manual text analysis of press statements; word counts of each strategy were registered electronically to access quantitative data of individual actors.

The three strategies reflecting values, the two strategies reflecting division and disagreement and the strategy reflecting change showed almost equal frequencies. The strategy of shaping community, serving the function of change, and the division strategy, demonstrating identification through dissociation, were the most frequent strategies. Politicians preferred the collaboration strategy, while health experts preferred the strategy of concern and recognition.

The six identification strategies extend the understanding of leadership crisis communication and contemporary rhetoric as community-building discourse aiming for speaker–audience collaboration. The study demonstrates that division and disagreement are equally essential components of crisis communication as values and change. When actors differ in choice of strategy, themes and publics, they may still come across as coordinated and unified in their calls for solidarity, collective efforts and common understanding.

Boards of directors of large companies all over the world frequently have a certain number of shared directors, which can be motivated by social structures that foster different types of links, including investments and vertical relationships. The purpose of this paper is to identify the effects that board interlocking exerts on innovation, considering the different nature of shared directors that finally determines the type of links dominating the boards.

Panel regression analyses were conducted using data collected from 69 Spanish listed innovative sector companies during the period 2010–2014, which provided an unbalanced panel of 325 data observations.

The results suggested that the typology of interlocks determined their effects on innovation, which had a positive influence when independent and extra-industry directors held multiple directorships, whereas it was negative in the case of intra-industry and women interlocking directors.

This study provided evidence for the diverse effects of interlocking directorates and contributed to the open debate on the best board composition for improving business innovation, considering the common feature of shared directorships.

The value of this research was twofold. On the one hand, the study considered a wide typology of interlocking directorates, such as women, affiliated and independent directors, intra- and extra-industry directorships, as well as shared directors from the same country. On the other hand, the effects of these different interlocking directorate typologies were analysed on innovation by considering different innovation indicators.

This chapter analyzes the relations among bank mergers, changes in boards and their networks, and changes in the global footprint of merging banks. We examine all mergers involving U.S. banks with foreign branches between 1986 and 2004. We find that while the largest banks have become even larger through mergers, their boards have stayed roughly the same size with the same pattern of connections, leaving banks relatively less central in the intercorporate network. And while global banks previously had more globally oriented boards, this is no longer the case, as the link between board networks and strategy has become more tenuous. Because global banks were particularly prone to merging, the average commercial bank in the U.S. is now far more domestically oriented than firms in most other industries. American banks have thus become more domestic at the same time that the rest of American industry has grown much more global.

This paper reports on the findings of the HEFCE‐funded outcomes project which aimed to investigate strategic planning in UK academic libraries.

The research consisted of a literature and documentation review, followed by interviews with academic library directors and senior institutional managers. There was also a survey of all UK HE libraries.

The key issues which need to be addressed by academic libraries in terms of strategic planning are: the involvement of library staff; communication of library aims and plans externally; level of active involvement in institutional and departmental planning; evaluation and target setting; and involvement in more “difficult” institutional aims such as income generation and widening participation.

The response to the various activities of this research project indicate the lack of interest in outcomes assessment within the academic library sector. There is little rigorous evidence in this area to inform library professionals.

The lack of interest in outcomes assessment with the sector is worrying; there is a general view of libraries as essential part of higher education and do not need to demonstrate how they contribute to institutional aims. This may leave libraries in a vulnerable position.

The paper reports on an issue which should be of great concern to the academic library sector, especially in the light of the proposal to axe professional posts at the University of Wales, Bangor library.