The board of directors as a team: investigating the influence of shared leadership and trust on board task performance.

Abstract

Traditionally, board research has been overshadowed by an overreliance on agency theory and input-output studies directly linking board demographics to board and firm performance. Recently, however, calls have been made to open up the black box created by such an approach through studying the inner workings of the illustrious boardroom. This paper aims to contribute to this promising stream of research. Specifically, we adopt a team approach to the board of directors in which we maintain that in order for a board to be effective and value creating it needs to function as a team. To illustrate this assertion we develop a theoretical model in which we hypothesize that team processes at the heart of the boardroom; shared leadership and trust in particular; are pivotal in establishing a relationship between board demographics and board task performance.