The following post comes to us from Nadya Malenko of the Finance Department at Boston College.
The board of directors is a collective body, whose members have diverse expertise in various aspects of the company’s business. Therefore, communication between directors is critical to successful board functioning. In recent years, regulators, shareholders, and directors themselves have been paying increased attention to decision-making policies that could increase the quality of board discussions. Executive sessions that exclude the management, separation of the CEO and chairman positions, board retreats, and separate committees on specific topics have been put in place to promote more effective communication. As governance experts Carter and Lorsch (2004) emphasize, “If we could offer only one piece of advice, it would be to strive for open communication among board members.”