Bethany Brown was elated when she learned that, by popular vote of other members of her professional health care society, she was elected to its board of directors at the national level. It had been a long road to navigate. Since she had become a member of the society nearly twenty years earlier, she had held several positions on the executive committee of the association at the state level and had volunteered extensively with the national association. Over the years she had never refused to lend a helping hand, even if the committee assignment was more work horse than show horse. She had contributed her energies and talents to the association because she agreed with its mission and value statements and felt that it had done a respectable job in meeting what she later termed the needs, wants, desires, expectations, and demands of its nearly 50,000 state, national and international members. She could clearly recall her graduate studies adviser, and major professor, insisting that all graduate students become members of their professional associations because it would be an excellent way to pursue continual lifelong learning and professional development. And if they met the academic qualifications for membership, they should also respond positively, he suggested, to any invitation to join their discipline’s national honorary society. Minimally, such memberships would look great, he said, on the office bragging wall. Bethany started her term on the national board of directors with zeal and optimism. She looked forward to the challenge and felt well prepared for the responsibility she knew she would be given. She had many years of experience in her health-related profession, having worked as a practitioner/provider and also in various management roles. She also had a lengthy history of volunteer service with the association at both the state and national levels. The various capacities in which she had worked and volunteered had prepared her well, she hoped, to be an effective board member and leader at the national level. Bethany was not naive about the presence of some tension and divisiveness within the national association: there had been a history over the years of many troublesome turf battles between management and volunteer governance members. These skirmishes seemed to focus on issues of power and control between members of the board of directors and the executive director (both past and current) and national office staff. There had also been a protracted history of governance changes within the association. For a number of years, the requirement that major policy decisions be passed by a legislative body composed of representatives from every state in the nation had led to policy gridlock. Important motions and policy decisions died amid debate and disagreement in the legislative body, and confidence had diminished in the ability of the national board to act resolutely on anything, especially any important national problem. Several years earlier, a governance restructure movement had succeeded, perhaps against all odds, and the legislative body had voted to eliminate itself. Many in the association thought that this was a move in the right direction. Now the association was governed by a single, twenty-member board of directors, with members elected by vote of all association members from a national slate of candidates. As a student of organizational theory, Bethany knew the pros and cons associated with the size of this board. Larger boards give voice to a wider range of constituent interests, but they can also lead to grandstanding by some members and result, literally, in a runaway board of directors. After the governance restructuring had been implemented, many volunteer association leaders, including Bethany, assumed that the turf battles and tension between the elected volunteer leadership and the association management staff would end. Unfortunately, Bethany discovered during her first year on the board of directors that a great deal of tension and distrust persisted. To Bethany, a newly elected board member, it appeared that both sides were culpable. During board meetings, she observed an insatiable pursuit of power plays that were identifiable even to the most inexperienced board member. As she told another board member in confidence at a luncheon meeting, the power exuded by the executive director and Mahogany Row was palpable! To better understand the working relations that evolved between the board of directors and the executive suite, a historical note is in order. As is common for most national boards of directors associated with academic disciplines, whether in the health sciences, business, public administration, or the arts and natural sciences, the elected board members were often professionals who had extensive managerial and/or academic teaching and research backgrounds. They were accomplished and often came from work settings in which they had wielded considerable influence, if not power. If they came to the board with extensive management experience, they were accustomed to being in charge of staff, managing day-to-day operations, dealing with budgets and financial accountings, and leading work units. If they came from academic teaching and research positions, they were accustomed to being immersed in the study of the clinical or subject areas pertinent to the profession, thereby earning great respect and enhancing the reputation of their department and parent university, but they often had little formal knowledge of association management and of the pedestrian, but salient, issues that regularly appeared on the board of directors’ agenda. After a year of being on the board of directors, Bethany saw that those from either background faced significant challenges in becoming effective board members. Those from managerial backgrounds tended to delve deeply into how policies and objectives would be implemented within the association’s office, and they often became preoccupied with budget questions related to how much money should be allotted to particular activities. On the other hand, those from academic backgrounds tended, in Bethany’s view, to debate various aspects of issues and policy decisions endlessly without ever reaching conclusions about how to move forward on them. The academics were used to reaching decisions by consensus—after lengthy, tedious debates. On the other hand, Bethany could see that the paid management staff of the association also, and quite often, raised the tensions between board and staff. The association was large enough that it employed a staff of more than 175 people. For the past five years its executive director had been Henry Gray, who had risen through the ranks and was a veteran of previous governance structures and turf battles between staff and association leaders. Some members felt that he personally benefited from the bar stool syndrome and that it served his rise to a position of national prominence. He had great name recognition, was a person of some presence when he addressed the board, and could wine and dine, lift a few, and tell stories with the best of them. He was no stranger to conflict, but he was a weak leader in the area of conflict resolution and compromise. Bethany’s impression was that Henry, although personable and competent in many areas of management, was highly selective of the information he chose to share with members of the board; as a result, not all relevant or pertinent information was available to the board regarding the progress being made on some of the association’s strategic objectives. Board members, particularly when they were new to the board of directors, did not always feel comfortable asking for information because, through word and deed, he seemed to convey the message that questions and concerns were unwelcome. As Bethany often stated under her breath, Yours is not to question why; yours is but to do or die. She knew her expected place, but as a seasoned professional, she was not ready to accept her newly assigned status and role—at least not as envisioned by Henry. Although Bethany could understand why the executive director tended to erect a wall between the board of directors and the paid staff, it also seemed that his lack of openness and candor exacerbated the tensions that bubbled up and served as a barrier between board members and staff that impeded effective and constructive communication. After one of the national meetings, she spoke briefly with her old graduate studies adviser about her board experience, and to her surprise, he shared with her a similar set of recollections. Years earlier, he too had been nominated and then elected by the organization membership to a prestigious executive board that also turned out to have several undesirable attributes. He had observed a clique mentality among the board members from prestigious colleges and universities. This group often succeeded in setting the guidelines and standards of the organization to mirror their own curricular direction—but not the national direction. Successive executive directors did not come from the academic discipline represented by the association, but instead were drawn from the ranks of career public appointees in Washington, DC. These people developed a network of friends, especially among nonprofit professional organizations, and prospered professionally because of the entitlements of cronyism. Year after year, the agenda for this association was developed by the executive director with only limited and highly selective input from those board members who were most compliant with the executive’s lead. Important issues within the association related to ethics, discrimination, environmental and global trends, and civil and human rights received scant consideration or attention by the largely older, white, male executive board. Finally, Bethany’s professor recalled, precious little input was solicited from the rank-and-file practitioners on the board or in the field. Bethany’s professor went on to say that, in his opinion, the main problem had rested in an elitism in the national office, coupled with the arrogance of a seemingly untouchable and unaccountable management cadre who had never distinguished themselves as practitioners or academics but were able to survive on K Street as sycophant bureaucrats. He chuckled as he recalled that the executive board meetings were largely centered on accepting the financial and budgetary audit reports prepared by one or another of the Big Six accounting firms, approving the two-year budget recommendations that would ensure the continuity of administrative services and making sure the association was actuarially sound insofar as it covered executive salaries, pensions and retirements, health benefits, and other perks. This board gave little attention to expanding the membership rostrum or providing meaningful technical, professional, and curriculum advice to its membership institutions and individual members. Bethany left this conversation in a state of renewed perplexity: was she dealing with a similar set of issues? She wondered if she would be able to carve out a legacy of service that truly met the needs of the nearly 50,000 academic and practitioner members in her health field niche. Or would she end up disgruntled and alienated instead, like her mentor, after her service to the national board had been rendered? Bethany reminisced about her many years of volunteer service and how she had prepared herself to meet earlier challenges. She had delved into the existing literature on association governance, issues with boards of directors, strategic planning, and collaborative leadership. After reflecting on her study of these topics, she had felt that it served her well in her various roles at the state level of the association. Now, she wondered, would her knowledge and leadership skills be enough to improve the working relationship between the national association staff and the board of directors as well? She remembered that she had often been a voice of moderation and reason on the state board of directors, and she was also aware that she was increasingly being looked to as a source of knowledge concerning association governance. Bethany could see, without being too vain, that she had the knowledge to make a difference in how the board of directors conducted its business. How could she communicate that, she wondered, and start to make a difference? 1. What information should be available to new members of a board of directors? How might some of the issues discussed in the case have been handled through information supplied at a board orientation for new members? Should seasoned board members be expected to attend orientations for new members? Offer justifications for your responses. 2. Should an executive director get involved in board-of-directors relationship dynamics including any cliques that may form or elitism that may develop? Should the views of the organization's staff members or the views of the organization's staff members or the views of practitioners outside of the organization affect the decisions of members of a board of directors? Explain your answers. 3. Bethany Brown appears to be a thoughtful new recruit to her professional association's board of directors. What is she doing well to prepare herself to serve in this role? What strategies might she also wish to consider?

Bethany Brown was elated when she learned that, by popular vote of other members of her professional health care society, she was elected to its board of directors at the national level. It had been a long road to navigate. Since she had become a member of the society nearly twenty years earlier, she had held several positions on the executive committee of the association at the state level and had volunteered extensively with the national association. Over the years she had never refused to lend a helping hand, even if the committee assignment was more work horse than show horse. She had contributed her energies and talents to the association because she agreed with its mission and value statements and felt that it had done a respectable job in meeting what she later termed the needs, wants, desires, expectations, and demands of its nearly 50,000 state, national and international members. She could clearly recall her graduate studies adviser, and major professor, insisting that all graduate students become members of their professional associations because it would be an excellent way to pursue continual lifelong learning and professional development. And if they met the academic qualifications for membership, they should also respond positively, he suggested, to any invitation to join their discipline’s national honorary society. Minimally, such memberships would look great, he said, on the office bragging wall. Bethany started her term on the national board of directors with zeal and optimism. She looked forward to the challenge and felt well prepared for the responsibility she knew she would be given. She had many years of experience in her health-related profession, having worked as a practitioner/provider and also in various management roles. She also had a lengthy history of volunteer service with the association at both the state and national levels. The various capacities in which she had worked and volunteered had prepared her well, she hoped, to be an effective board member and leader at the national level. Bethany was not naive about the presence of some tension and divisiveness within the national association: there had been a history over the years of many troublesome turf battles between management and volunteer governance members. These skirmishes seemed to focus on issues of power and control between members of the board of directors and the executive director (both past and current) and national office staff. There had also been a protracted history of governance changes within the association. For a number of years, the requirement that major policy decisions be passed by a legislative body composed of representatives from every state in the nation had led to policy gridlock. Important motions and policy decisions died amid debate and disagreement in the legislative body, and confidence had diminished in the ability of the national board to act resolutely on anything, especially any important national problem. Several years earlier, a governance restructure movement had succeeded, perhaps against all odds, and the legislative body had voted to eliminate itself. Many in the association thought that this was a move in the right direction. Now the association was governed by a single, twenty-member board of directors, with members elected by vote of all association members from a national slate of candidates. As a student of organizational theory, Bethany knew the pros and cons associated with the size of this board. Larger boards give voice to a wider range of constituent interests, but they can also lead to grandstanding by some members and result, literally, in a runaway board of directors. After the governance restructuring had been implemented, many volunteer association leaders, including Bethany, assumed that the turf battles and tension between the elected volunteer leadership and the association management staff would end. Unfortunately, Bethany discovered during her first year on the board of directors that a great deal of tension and distrust persisted. To Bethany, a newly elected board member, it appeared that both sides were culpable. During board meetings, she observed an insatiable pursuit of power plays that were identifiable even to the most inexperienced board member. As she told another board member in confidence at a luncheon meeting, the power exuded by the executive director and Mahogany Row was palpable! To better understand the working relations that evolved between the board of directors and the executive suite, a historical note is in order. As is common for most national boards of directors associated with academic disciplines, whether in the health sciences, business, public administration, or the arts and natural sciences, the elected board members were often professionals who had extensive managerial and/or academic teaching and research backgrounds. They were accomplished and often came from work settings in which they had wielded considerable influence, if not power. If they came to the board with extensive management experience, they were accustomed to being in charge of staff, managing day-to-day operations, dealing with budgets and financial accountings, and leading work units. If they came from academic teaching and research positions, they were accustomed to being immersed in the study of the clinical or subject areas pertinent to the profession, thereby earning great respect and enhancing the reputation of their department and parent university, but they often had little formal knowledge of association management and of the pedestrian, but salient, issues that regularly appeared on the board of directors’ agenda. After a year of being on the board of directors, Bethany saw that those from either background faced significant challenges in becoming effective board members. Those from managerial backgrounds tended to delve deeply into how policies and objectives would be implemented within the association’s office, and they often became preoccupied with budget questions related to how much money should be allotted to particular activities. On the other hand, those from academic backgrounds tended, in Bethany’s view, to debate various aspects of issues and policy decisions endlessly without ever reaching conclusions about how to move forward on them. The academics were used to reaching decisions by consensus—after lengthy, tedious debates. On the other hand, Bethany could see that the paid management staff of the association also, and quite often, raised the tensions between board and staff. The association was large enough that it employed a staff of more than 175 people. For the past five years its executive director had been Henry Gray, who had risen through the ranks and was a veteran of previous governance structures and turf battles between staff and association leaders. Some members felt that he personally benefited from the bar stool syndrome and that it served his rise to a position of national prominence. He had great name recognition, was a person of some presence when he addressed the board, and could wine and dine, lift a few, and tell stories with the best of them. He was no stranger to conflict, but he was a weak leader in the area of conflict resolution and compromise. Bethany’s impression was that Henry, although personable and competent in many areas of management, was highly selective of the information he chose to share with members of the board; as a result, not all relevant or pertinent information was available to the board regarding the progress being made on some of the association’s strategic objectives. Board members, particularly when they were new to the board of directors, did not always feel comfortable asking for information because, through word and deed, he seemed to convey the message that questions and concerns were unwelcome. As Bethany often stated under her breath, Yours is not to question why; yours is but to do or die. She knew her expected place, but as a seasoned professional, she was not ready to accept her newly assigned status and role—at least not as envisioned by Henry. Although Bethany could understand why the executive director tended to erect a wall between the board of directors and the paid staff, it also seemed that his lack of openness and candor exacerbated the tensions that bubbled up and served as a barrier between board members and staff that impeded effective and constructive communication. After one of the national meetings, she spoke briefly with her old graduate studies adviser about her board experience, and to her surprise, he shared with her a similar set of recollections. Years earlier, he too had been nominated and then elected by the organization membership to a prestigious executive board that also turned out to have several undesirable attributes. He had observed a clique mentality among the board members from prestigious colleges and universities. This group often succeeded in setting the guidelines and standards of the organization to mirror their own curricular direction—but not the national direction. Successive executive directors did not come from the academic discipline represented by the association, but instead were drawn from the ranks of career public appointees in Washington, DC. These people developed a network of friends, especially among nonprofit professional organizations, and prospered professionally because of the entitlements of cronyism. Year after year, the agenda for this association was developed by the executive director with only limited and highly selective input from those board members who were most compliant with the executive’s lead. Important issues within the association related to ethics, discrimination, environmental and global trends, and civil and human rights received scant consideration or attention by the largely older, white, male executive board. Finally, Bethany’s professor recalled, precious little input was solicited from the rank-and-file practitioners on the board or in the field. Bethany’s professor went on to say that, in his opinion, the main problem had rested in an elitism in the national office, coupled with the arrogance of a seemingly untouchable and unaccountable management cadre who had never distinguished themselves as practitioners or academics but were able to survive on K Street as sycophant bureaucrats. He chuckled as he recalled that the executive board meetings were largely centered on accepting the financial and budgetary audit reports prepared by one or another of the Big Six accounting firms, approving the two-year budget recommendations that would ensure the continuity of administrative services and making sure the association was actuarially sound insofar as it covered executive salaries, pensions and retirements, health benefits, and other perks. This board gave little attention to expanding the membership rostrum or providing meaningful technical, professional, and curriculum advice to its membership institutions and individual members. Bethany left this conversation in a state of renewed perplexity: was she dealing with a similar set of issues? She wondered if she would be able to carve out a legacy of service that truly met the needs of the nearly 50,000 academic and practitioner members in her health field niche. Or would she end up disgruntled and alienated instead, like her mentor, after her service to the national board had been rendered? Bethany reminisced about her many years of volunteer service and how she had prepared herself to meet earlier challenges. She had delved into the existing literature on association governance, issues with boards of directors, strategic planning, and collaborative leadership. After reflecting on her study of these topics, she had felt that it served her well in her various roles at the state level of the association. Now, she wondered, would her knowledge and leadership skills be enough to improve the working relationship between the national association staff and the board of directors as well? She remembered that she had often been a voice of moderation and reason on the state board of directors, and she was also aware that she was increasingly being looked to as a source of knowledge concerning association governance. Bethany could see, without being too vain, that she had the knowledge to make a difference in how the board of directors conducted its business. How could she communicate that, she wondered, and start to make a difference? 1. What information should be available to new members of a board of directors? How might some of the issues discussed in the case have been handled through information supplied at a board orientation for new members? Should seasoned board members be expected to attend orientations for new members? Offer justifications for your responses. 2. Should an executive director get involved in board-of-directors relationship dynamics including any cliques that may form or elitism that may develop? Should the views of the organization's staff members or the views of the organization's staff members or the views of practitioners outside of the organization affect the decisions of members of a board of directors? Explain your answers. 3. Bethany Brown appears to be a thoughtful new recruit to her professional association's board of directors. What is she doing well to prepare herself to serve in this role? What strategies might she also wish to consider?