The corporate governance debate has, in the last two decades, reached a stronghold in Europe. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of a company's governance is the constitution of its boardroom. Non-executive directors, in their independent and impartial, supposedly external nature, serve to keep...

It is trite law that a director is a fiduciary to his or her company and must act in the interests of the company. However, identifying the “interests of the company” is not so straightforward. Different theories of the nature of the company and different stakeholders interested in the...

This Article describes the results from fifty-seven interviews with corporate directors and a limited number of other persons (including institutional investors, search firm personnel, and the like) regarding their views on corporate board diversity. It highlights numerous tensions in these...

This symposium essay summarizes our ongoing ethnographic research on corporate board diversity, discussing the central tension in our respondents’ views – their overwhelmingly enthusiastic support of board diversity coupled with an inability to articulate coherent accounts of board diversity...

Corporate governance has become a hot topic following accounting scandals at Enron, WorldCom and others, which led to colossal corporate collapses. In many of those cases, the boards were 'asleep at the wheel,' failing to catch managements' questionable accounting practices. The Sarbanes-Oxley...

Boards of public corporations in the United States are becoming increasingly independent, due to an effort to ensure that shareholders' interests in the company are protected. Yet, little attention has been given to the way that board members obtain and digest the information necessary for their...

Former employee directors bring unique aspects to firm governance. While they have valuable firm-specific knowledge, their connections to current management often compromise their ability to serve as effective monitors. Consistent with this viewpoint, we find that the presence of former employee...

Does personal litigation risk for independent directors materially affect firm valuation, compensation-related issues for independent directors, and board composition decisions? We use the unexpected In re Investors Bancorp decision in 2017 by the Delaware Supreme Court, which lowered the...

Federal law mandates that audit and compensation committees of public companies be comprised entirely of independent directors. The assumption underlying these legal requirements is that independent directors are more likely to act as monitors of the company's top management. In this paper, we...