Evaluating Boards of Directors: what constitutes a good corporate board?

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to identify what constitutes a good board of directors, and this is based on a comparison between academic literature, corporate governance rating systems and our field research into board practices. We observed that “traditional” academic research focused on a limited number of quantifiable board characteristics, while practitioners attach greater importance to “soft” elements, which are nearly absent in the literature and in the governance ratings. These findings highlight the need for a better understanding of all elements that determine board effectiveness. Furthermore, our results identify three areas of improvement for boards of directors.