Board Dynamics and the Influence of Professional Background, Gender and Ethnic Diversity of Directors

Common stockholders are the basic owners of a corporation, but few stockholders of large corporations take an active role in management. Instead, they elect the corporation’s board of directors to represent their interests. Board members seldom get involved in the day-to-day management of the company. They establish the basic mission and goals of the corporation and appoint

In any organization the personal and professional relationships between board of directors, CEOs, management and staff play a critical role in how effectively an organization’s operational goals and objectives will be fulfilled. Personal relationships between the board of directors and CEOs can be especially problematic when personal perceptions and emotions are influencing decisions of the organization. Singleton and Nail (1986) indicated in some situations professionals are able to handle business and personal relationships with the same individuals while others see the relationships as dichotomous. Board members that are family or long-time personal friends can create personal bias based on incentives to individual members rather than pursuing the best interest of the organization.

Joshua Kennon (2007), stated that “The board of directors is the highest governing authority within the management structure at any publicly traded company and is usually made up of the directors who are elected for a specific number of years by the shareholders”. According to Wikipedia,” A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization”.

Richard L. Zweigenhaft and G. William Domhoff continue their study of what once was a white male power structure of business world in their 2011 book, The New CEOs: Women, African American, Latino, and Asian American Leaders of Fortune 500 Companies. In this recent study, the authors explore the broad theme of diversity by studying the seventy-four women and people of color in the chief corporate officer position of Fortune 500 Companies. Zweigenhaft and Domhoff (2011) conclude that small diversity within the top of the corporate body does not signify or translate into an open society oriented on equality of opportunity, education, and income. American society is still greatly circumscribed by class, color, and gender, if have not become even more divided economically than it was before because of diversity as it was implemented by the top corporations (Zweigenhaft & Domhoff, 2011).

Now that the importance of both professionalism and diversity has been thoroughly examined, the question remains how can both be successfully recruited ethically? Before the recruitment process can begin, it is important that the existing board members and/or founders assess the present demographics of the board of directors utilizing effective tools such as a diversity audit (Eaton, & Difilippo, 2016). A diversity audit can assess all areas of diversity including but not limited to age, race, gender, giving potential, and area of expertise showing the current board what they are lacking and what kind of potential board member or members need to recruit to further the resource and reach of the organization. This assessment stage is a

Attracting board members with the right skills and diversity mix, and those able to commit the time required to fulfil the role effectively can be difficult, particularly for some of the more complex and sizeable providers. Paying

Company has 11 board directors. It is a diversity culture while everyone have something similar which all have huge amount of experience and they all achieved a lot of successes in their career. This reflect into Whole Food success in their vision and mission. Each member has specific skills in different company operational segments such as capital, financial, human resources, social response, etc. which can make caution and wise decisions leading the company to

This paper will be a literature review that discusses the notion that, the board of directors (the collective) as a self-regulating social system. This will be achieved by a systematic review of a collection of works into the area of corporate governance spanning the birth of the industrial revolution to the modern day. The areas of emphasis will be a view to identifying the key concepts, issues and laws created to better focus the actions of boards. In addition to identifying the locations for each of these developments and how this has led to divergent practices across the globe. Following the review of the literature the author of this paper will seek to discern the current direction and nature of corporate governance into the future.

Breeden’s notion was that improving the board performance goes beyond having members with the right experience and background. He proposed that the CEO and chairman are independent of each other to encourage a separation of leadership and board independence. He defined having

The business landscape has been dramatically changed and overhauled by the globalization process in today’s world. Adoption of diversity by many firms is in the aim to gain competitive advantage from others. There have been different findings on the influence of Top Management Team diversity on performance and corporate strategies in the organizations. Some findings show that there is a significant relationship between Top Management Team and performance while others reveal there is no relationship. The study seeks to investigate the impact of TMT diversity on corporate strategies and the organization’s performance. The study will contribute to the knowledge about how workplace TMT diversity relates to the decision-making process and the effect on company’s growth. The lack of diversity at the work place is a major arising issue in many organizations globally. The purpose of the mixed research study will be to investigate TMT’s diversity with the aim of identifying how it affects decision making inform of corporate strategies and organizational performance. The research method will be mixed where it will employ the use of both the qualitative

Following a systematic literature search, data from 20 studies on 3097 companies published in peer-reviewed academic journals were included in the meta-analysis. On average, the boards consisted of eight members and female participation was low (mean 14%) in all studies. Half of the 20 studies were based on data from developing countries and 62% from higher income countries. According to the random-effects model, the overall mean weighted correlation between percentage of females on corporate boards and firm performance was small and non-significant (r = .01, 95% confidence interval: -.04, .07). Similar small effect sizes were observed when comparing studies based on developing vs. developed countries and higher vs. lower income countries.

Independence in corporate governance fosters good management with no conflict of interest. A company board made-up of independent directors enables those

Women on board are bringing in diversity and intellect to the organization. The main idea of the article is to show how diversity in teams led to higher profitability and greater client satisfaction. The essence and central theme of this article is that increased number of women in an organization has increased its collective intelligence. There has been a strong correlation between the number of women on board and in the company’s ROI and ROE.

The business landscape has been dramatically changed and overhauled by the globalization process in today’s world. Adoption of diversity by many firms is in the aim to gain competitive advantage from others. There have been different findings on the influence of Top Management Team diversity on performance and corporate strategies in the organizations. Some findings show that there is a significant relationship between Top Management Team and performance while others reveal there is no relationship. The study seeks to investigate the impact of TMT diversity on corporate strategies and the organization’s performance. Great contribution to the research field about how TMT diversity relates to the decision-making process and the effect on company’s growth will be made by the study. The lack of diversity at the work place is a major arising issue in many organizations globally. The purpose of the mixed research study will be to investigate TMT’s diversity with the aim of identifying how it affects decision making inform of corporate strategies and organizational performance. The research method will be mixed where it will employ the use of both the qualitative and quantitative techniques. The study’s main focus will be on the various companies or the organizations that will provide for study participants as respondents. Interviews and questionnaires will be used to collect information from the participant from the different companies. Variables for measurement will be based on

ABSTRACT Manuscript Type: Review Research Question/Issue: This review examines how gender diversity on corporate boards influences corporate governance outcomes that in turn impact performance. We describe extant research on theoretical perspectives, characteristics, and impact of women on corporate boards (WOCB) at micro, meso, and macro levels: individual, board, firm, and industry/ environment. Research Finding/Results: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive review of WOCBs, incorporating and integrating research from over 400