Company boards in both the private and public sectors are in the firing line as never before. Whenever something goes drastically wrong, it is the board that must take the rap, and talk is soon heard about board responsibility and investigation of everything that occurred.
Therefore, it is not surprising that boards spend much of their time making sure that everything is proceeding correctly by focusing on control.
Simultaneously, the boards of companies listed on the stock exchange are under constant pressure to produce even better quarterly results. Often a company’s key financial figures are used as a compass to show in which direction it is going.
Unused expertise
We expend much time and energy on finding board members who have the right expertise. It is therefore paradoxical that this expertise is little used in practice.
“Insufficient use is made of board members’ expertise. We must put more focus on the human aspects in order to ensure that boards play an active part in creating value,” maintains Professor Morten Huse from BI Norwegian School of Management.
Few people are better acquainted with Norwegian boardrooms than Professor Huse, who headed BI’s research programme The Value Creating Board from 2003 to 2007.
In his research he is concerned to penetrate the mystique that surrounds boards’ activities, and succeeded in gaining access to the inside of the boardroom in order to obtain a better understanding of the processes at work.
Focus on creating value
Board researcher Huse has now published a book entitled “Boards, Governance and Value Creation. The Human Side of Corporate Governance” through the international publishing house Cambridge University Press, in which he focuses on the human aspects of boards’ work.
In this, Huse presents new research-based insight developed out of the research programme The Value Creating Board.
He explains that, “The work of a board can be seen as interplay between different actors wishing to achieve their ends. This means that in the interaction between board members we must take into account human aspects such as confidence, feelings, power and influence”.
The board’s work takes place not only in the boardroom but also in informal arenas and interaction with the outside world.
According to Huse, the human and social factors involved in a board’s work are more important than the structural factors, and in his view the chairman has particular responsibility for the development of a good boardroom work culture.
The best boards are highly effective, well-run working groups which are characterised by openness and generosity, maintains Huse.
Culture to encourage better board work
Morten Huse wants boards to operate as teams to a greater extent and to spend time on using their collective expertise to the benefit of the company.
The board expert has produced a list of seven distinctive features of a board’s culture that contribute towards value creation:
1) Critical, questioning attitude and independence
Audun Farbrot | alfa
Further information:
http://www.bi.no
Microtechnology industry is hiring – positive developments of past years continue
09.04.2018 | IVAM Fachverband für Mikrotechnik
RWI/ISL-Container Throughput Index with minor decline on a high overall level
20.03.2018 | RWI – Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung
Vaccinia viruses serve as a vaccine against human smallpox and as the basis of new cancer therapies. Two studies now provide fascinating insights into their unusual propagation strategy at the atomic level.
For viruses to multiply, they usually need the support of the cells they infect. In many cases, only in their host’s nucleus can they find the machines,...
More than one hundred and fifty years have passed since the publication of James Clerk Maxwell's "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field" (1865). What would our lives be without this publication?
It is difficult to imagine, as this treatise revolutionized our fundamental understanding of electric fields, magnetic fields, and light. The twenty original...
In a joint experimental and theoretical work performed at the Heidelberg Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, an international team of physicists detected for the first time an orbital crossing in the highly charged ion Pr⁹⁺. Optical spectra were recorded employing an electron beam ion trap and analysed with the aid of atomic structure calculations. A proposed nHz-wide transition has been identified and its energy was determined with high precision. Theory predicts a very high sensitivity to new physics and extremely low susceptibility to external perturbations for this “clock line” making it a unique candidate for proposed precision studies.
Laser spectroscopy of neutral atoms and singly charged ions has reached astonishing precision by merit of a chain of technological advances during the past...
The ability to investigate the dynamics of single particle at the nano-scale and femtosecond level remained an unfathomed dream for years. It was not until the dawn of the 21st century that nanotechnology and femtoscience gradually merged together and the first ultrafast microscopy of individual quantum dots (QDs) and molecules was accomplished.
Ultrafast microscopy studies entirely rely on detecting nanoparticles or single molecules with luminescence techniques, which require efficient emitters to...
Graphene, a two-dimensional structure made of carbon, is a material with excellent mechanical, electronic and optical properties. However, it did not seem suitable for magnetic applications. Together with international partners, Empa researchers have now succeeded in synthesizing a unique nanographene predicted in the 1970s, which conclusively demonstrates that carbon in very specific forms has magnetic properties that could permit future spintronic applications. The results have just been published in the renowned journal Nature Nanotechnology.
Depending on the shape and orientation of their edges, graphene nanostructures (also known as nanographenes) can have very different properties – for example,...
Anzeige
Anzeige
03.12.2019 | Event News
First International Conference on Agrophotovoltaics in August 2020
15.11.2019 | Event News
Laser Symposium on Electromobility in Aachen: trends for the mobility revolution
15.11.2019 | Event News
Supporting structures of wind turbines contribute to wind farm blockage effect
13.12.2019 | Physics and Astronomy
Chinese team makes nanoscopy breakthrough
13.12.2019 | Physics and Astronomy
Tiny quantum sensors watch materials transform under pressure
13.12.2019 | Materials Sciences