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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of prior firm performance on board composition and governance structure.

A total of 90 companies listed on National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations were used for this study. Hypotheses were tested using both general linear regression and logit regression analyses.

The results showed that prior negative change in firm performance was significantly related to a decrease in the overall number of directors and a decrease in the number of outside directors.

The sample size used in this study was relatively small and the focus was on small to medium‐sized firms, so the results found here may not apply to firms larger than those used in our sample.

Directors may want to consider the implications for governance practices found in this study, specifically, whether smaller boards with fewer outsiders are appropriate following periods of performance decline.

This study is one of the first to examine the effects of trends in prior firm performance on board composition and chief executive officer duality.

Human capital has been traditionally viewed in terms of how an individual’s investment in knowledge, skills and abilities can lead to higher pay or promotions. More recently, human capital has been regarded as a unit-level resource using the term “human capital resources” to consider the aggregate effects of human capital. The purpose of this paper is to examine the collective human capital present in a firm’s board of directors as a valuable resource leading to superior firm outcomes.

The study examined the effects on firm innovation of the scientific expertise of corporate directors, average board tenure and the presence of a firm’s founder on the board. Data from a sample of pharmaceutical firms were analyzed with the dependent variable, innovation, measured as patent applications and both individual and unit-level human capital measures of the predictor variables.

The results show that the presence of a founder-director is positively related to innovation and more pronounced when combined with the board’s scientific expertise. Board tenure shows a relationship to innovation and is more evident in combination with the board’s aggregate level of scientific expertise. The effect of directors’ scientific expertise is also greater when measured at the board level of scientific expertise.

Future studies should examine these relationships within a broader context extending the research to other industries thereby incorporating wider variation in both the antecedents and measures of innovation. In addition, future studies might investigate a likely non-monotonic relationship of board tenure with strategic outcomes, recognizing the non-linear nature of effects of board tenure.

In addition to the theoretical and empirical implications, this research may also inform practicing managers charged with constituting their boards of directors and provide some guidance for the recruitment and retention of board members. The research may also assist top managers and investors in knowing when the presence of a founder on the board is useful and supportive of the firm’s strategic direction.

The study extends scholarly understanding of human capital theory beyond the top management team to boards of directors demonstrating the importance not only of directors’ individual capital but also how it combines with that of other directors. Moreover, it enhances understanding of board characteristics beyond the bounds of demographic characteristics to show that additional qualities affect firm strategy. This research also informs managers, boards and investors how boards might be more effectively constituted to impact firm strategy.

The extant research on student attrition and retention has relied on models that focus on factors over which universities may have limited control and thus not lead to actionable practices. To address this shortcoming, the authors applied organizational support theory (OST) to test the association between students' perceptions of justice, perceived organizational support (POS), perceived professor support, organizational identification, and intention to quit.

Using items from validated scales, a survey was used to collect data from students in the college of business at a southwestern public university in the United States. A final sample of 316 observations was fitted to a structural equation model to test the study's a priori hypotheses.

The authors found that professor support and procedural justice had direct positive effects on POS. Distributive justice and interactional justice indirectly influenced POS through professor support. In turn, POS had decreased students' intention to quit and increased their organizational identification. The antecedents of POS indirectly influenced intention to quit and organizational identification. The determinants in the model accounted for 12% of the variance in students' intentions to quit, and 25% of students' organizational identification.

This study contributes to the student attrition literature where few studies have applied OST to student populations despite the strong link between POS and intention to quit in employment settings. In this study, the authors provide evidence of the suitability of the OST framework to predict students' intentions to quit.