Corporate boards: new strategies for adding value at the top

This outstanding work reveals how boards governing 21st-century organizations can change their practices and align their principles to successfully govern the organization of the new economy. The authors propose that judging a board's effectiveness should be done not in a "shareholder" context but in a "stakeholder" context instead. They couch their reforms in a framework that focuses on what determines effective governance behavior: information, knowledge, power, and rewards.They argue it is behavior, not practices that count, and look at boards from a group and an organizational perspective.

Author Notes

JAY A. CONGER is professor of organizational behaviort at the London Business School and senior research scientist at the University of Southern California's (USC) Center for Effective Organizations. He is the author or coauthor of nine books, including Building Leaders (1999) and The Leader's Change Handbook (1998), both from Jossey-Bass. EDWARD E. LAWLER is director of the Center for Effective Organizations at USC and professor of management and organization in the USC Marshall School of Business. He has been named one of the country's leading management experts by Business Week magazine. DAVID L. FINEGOLD is associate research professor at the Center for Effective Organizations. His research focusing on the impact of the Internet on firms and their relationship with employees will be featured in Net-Enabled, a forthcoming book with Jossey-Bass.

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Publisher's Weekly Review

Increased shareholder activism and the celebrity status of individuals like Jack Welch and Bill Gates are placing corporate boards under the microscope. Corporate Boards: New Strategies for Adding Value at the Top is an outgrowth of a provocative article published in the Harvard Business Review in 1999 by Jay A. Conger, Edward E. Lawler III and David L. Finegold, all colleagues at the University of Southern California's Center for Effective Organizations. They argue that, with technology at the heart of 21st-century business, corporate directors need to recognize the value of knowledge as a strategic asset, putting their focus on meeting not only the demands of shareholders but also those of stakeholders, including employees and the no-longer-neatly-defined global communities in which they operate. ( June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Introduction	p. xi
Part 1 What Should Boards Do?	p. 1
1 Critical Board Activities	p. 3
2 Attributes of High Performance Boards	p. 20
Part 2 Principles and Practices for Effective Boards	p. 35
3 Board Membership	p. 37
4 Board Leadership	p. 57
5 Information for High Performance Boards	p. 73
6 Evaluating the CEO	p. 88
7 Evaluating and Rewarding the Board's Performance	p. 103
Part 3 Boards in the Future	p. 121
8 Governing in the Age of the Internet	p. 123
9 To Whom Are Boards Accountable?	p. 141
10 Redesigning the Board: New Governance Forms	p. 164
Conclusion	p. 175
Appendix Research Background	p. 179
Notes	p. 187
Acknowledgments	p. 195
The Authors	p. 197
Index	p. 201

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Table of Contents