Research - Peter Crow | Helping boards govern with impact

Published on: 20 March 2015

Oh the demand...

Nine business days after arriving in England for meetings and speaking engagements in several English and Swiss cities, I am once more seated at Heathrow: this time to enjoy Air Zealand's service on the long flight home—and to sleep! Reflecting on fifteen meetings, eight hotels and many conversations, the main thought to emerge from this trip is "demand". Simply, the level of interest in boards, board practice and how to get boards doing the 'right' things in order to achieve the business performance outcomes expected by shareholders has been almost overwhelming. For example:

Professors from two English universities and one Irish university have offered to organise masterclasses to expedite healthy debate about boards and the difference they can make.
Two different groups of people, both based in Zurich, including professorial staff at unisg.ch, have said they want to organise teaching and learning seminars, to raise the bar amongst banks and international businesses.
The team at Ethical Boardroom has invited me to provide the editorial commentary for their summer issue.
Several (sorry, I'm not at liberty to disclose details) have requested advice on matters relating to board structure, apprenticing, strategy and business performance.

That so many people are actively seeking help to improve business performance through effective contributions in the boardroom has caught me on the hop. After all, the public persona presented by boards and chief executives is that they have everything under control. However, when the conversation moves beyond platitudes, its seems most are worried. I have put myself at the service of all who are interested. If you would like to know more, or to schedule some assistance, please contact me.

Published on: 15 February 2015

ICMLG'15: Conference wrap-up

The annual International Conference on Management, Leadership and Governance is over for another year. The third edition of the conference, in Auckland New Zealand, built on the earlier editions. The two keynote speakers, Phil O'Reilly and Andrea Thompson, were well received. They set the scene for each day nicely. Three strong themes emerged during the conference, as follows:

While business researchers are making a contribution, progress is painfully slow—akin to plodding. The gap (probably best described as a chasm) between the academic research community and the business community is far wider than it should be or needs to be. While researchers need to stand somewhat apart from praxis in order to conceptualise new understandings, they need to avoid standing so far away that their work lacks relevance. Pace and relevance appear to be crucial—if research outputs are to be appreciated by the business community.
The research emphasis needs to change, from standing outside the subject of interest (the board, the leader, the management situation) and counting things (typically secondary attributes based on pubic data or interview/survey responses), to getting close to the subject in action. This change demands more qualitative research, in search of deep understanding and meaning. While the theme has become increasingly apparent at conferences in the last year, several delegates voiced opinions that a tipping point might be tantalisingly close.
Building on this last comment, researchers need to open the black box (of the board, the management team, the organisational situation) and learn what is actually going on. However, this introduces a new challenge, of discernment. Perhaps business researchers need to take the lead shown by the medical and engineering communities (amongst others). Research-capable doctors do medical research and engineers do engineering research. Has the time come for business research to be performed by researchers with real-world business experience as opposed to researchers who have never been inside a boardroom or managed a commercial entity? Many at the conference thought so.

Some further reflections:

The organiser (Academic Conferences and Publishing, based in the UK) and hosts (AUT and Massey) did a wonderful job. Thank you to Louise, Pat, Coral and James, in particular.
The quality of the papers presented, and the author presentations seemed to be higher than the two previous conferences. Perhaps the review process worked better, or researchers are self-selecting such that only those with meaningful research submit papers.
The dinner cruise, on Auckland Harbour, was the social highlight of the conference. Delegates from the Middle East and Europe (especially) were effusive in their comments. That Auckland turned on a wonderful evening sealed the deal!
In future, ACP may want to consider organising a programme for partners. Around 20 percent of the delegates brought their spouses with them to New Zealand and there was nothing organised for them.

So, there you have it. The 3rd International Conference on Management Leadership and Governance is over. I look forward to the 4th edition in twelve months' time. The venue should be announced in the next month or two.

Published on: 14 February 2015

ICMLG'15: Board roles in SMEs

Wafa Khlif, a Tunisian professor working at a French university in Spain (Toulouse Business School, Barcelona), presented the results of recent research into boards in small–medium enterprises (SMEs). The purpose of the research was to understand how boards work and the role they play in the governance of SMEs.

The research suggests that boards perform different roles in organisations, from that of an entirely passive bystander (she uses the wonderfully descriptive term, legal fiction) through effective cooperation to that of a dominant bully. However, most of the research has investigated large and typically publicly listed firms. Precious little research has been published on SME boards, until now. Khlif interviewed 26 directors and chief executives of six Tunisian-based SMEs over a two year period.

All four of the important roles of boards that had been identified in larger firms—control, service, strategy and mediation—were also apparent in smaller companies. However, no single combination or arrangement of the roles was apparent. As with larger companies, considerable variation in the way boards work, and their purported dynamism and impact on firm performance (as claimed by interviewees), was apparent in the interview data that Khlif and her colleagues collected and analysed. However, some combinations of roles that are more common in larger firms (the watchdog, for example) is not so common in smaller firms (where the owner is more likely to be directly involved as a director and/or a manager).

The framework that Khlif and her colleagues developed as part of their research shows how the important roles can "fit" together in SMEs, and the types of background factors (firm complexity, ownership span, amongst others) that might influence how the roles are performed are identified. However, the research did not explore the link between board roles and business performance.

From an academic perspective, this research provides support to the idea that the role of the board cannot be adequately explained by a single theory. It provides strong guidance for practice as well: boards and board situations are all different, so forget about 'best practice' cookie-cutter models. Therefore, owners and boards that ignore the organisational context when boards are being established or reviewed do so at their peril.

Published on: 14 February 2015

Is governance anything more than a fad?

Have you noticed how common the term 'governance' and a whole raft of variants have become in the last decade? The terms (there's an increasingly large set of them) get peppered throughout conversations almost at will. Corporate governance; HR governance; IT governance; enterprise business technology governance; and, organisational governance (amongst others) have all entered the lexicon in the few years. Hardly a month goes by without another variant being introduced, or so it seems.

A cynic might say that governance has become some sort of panacea in the eyes of many. If you have governance, or better still, if you have a specific type of governance (ITgov, HRgov, et al), then the likelihood of objectives being met or projects being delivered on-time is somehow greater than if governance is not in place. What happened to good management, good leadership, accountability and responsibility?

Is there any substance to this? Or are these terms simply examples of people grasping at straws or hiding behind jargon, in lieu of doing the hard yards to work out what actually matters? I've decided to investigate this during 2015—to try to separate the talk and hot air from what actually matters. If you have a view on this, or can point me to some credible research, I'd love to hear from you.

Published on: 13 February 2015

ICMLG'15: Crucial attributes of successful entrepreneurs

Bob Perkins of Mercer University, Atlanta, has been studying leadership and entrepreneurship for many years. His recent focus has been on leadership theory and the discovery of essential tasks that entrepreneurs need to accomplish during the start-up phase of the business lifecycle. This work is necessary because many of the classical leadership models do not fit the start-up situation that well.

In his work to date, Perkins has identified three essential start-up task behaviours:

Article a clear and compelling vision
Build brand identity and image
Assemble a capable team

Perkins' delivery was polished and his material interesting. However, I came away wondering whether these tasks are actually any different from that the leaders of larger enterprises need to perform. Then the penny dropped. The CEO of Coca-cola does not need to develop a brand identity, that work is already done. Perkins was quick to qualify his work as being at a preliminary stage, and that further analysis may see some adjustments and refinements. I look forward to following Perkins' work. If he can confirm the essential tasks, and form them into an entrepreneur-specific leadership model, the implications for commerce could be quite significant.

Published on: 13 February 2015

ICMLG'15: Day one wrap

The first day of ICMLG2015 has been completed, with a very pleasant dinner cruise on Auckland Harbour. The three-hour cruise gave delegates time to enjoy the view back to the city across one of the world's great harbours; to get to know each other better; and, to reflect on the conference to date. The conversations were upbeat—both for the venue and logistics (thanks AUT and Massey) and the topical nature of the presentations and discussion on Day 1. The following points provide the tiniest of glimpses into some of the conversations and thinking so far:

Is 'good enough' actually good enough? Many academic researchers pursue high degrees of precision, whereas most consumers (business leaders and boards in this case) are happy to gain insights and a general sense. Several of the delegates, encouraged by Phil O'Reilly's keynote, have openly questioned whether business schools should come down from their ivory towers. Good stuff!
Can we go faster? Research needs to change gear, to get ahead of the curve. Instead of reporting what has occurred, researchers need to provide guidance for leaders and for board practice, to explain what can happen to business performance if certain activities or events occur.
Does the researcher have a role 'within' the research? Much quantitative/positivist research has the researcher as an external bystander, whereas qualitative/interpretivist research approaches often expect the researcher to position themselves 'within the research'. The risks of the latter are many, but the relevance of much of the research produced by the former is questionable. the research agenda needs to move beyond simply counting things or describing things. I think a middle ground exists. However, explanatory research inspired by realism is not well understood in business schools—yet.
The chasm between business and research simply must be bridged. That many businesses do not think of contacting business schools to commission research is an indictment on business schools, not business. Business researchers need to possess business experience and acumen, so they know what they are looking at when they investigate business phenomena. More work—much more—is needed on this score.
Are business researchers tantalisingly close to a breakthrough? Thomas Kuhn (The structure of scientific revolutions) spoke about this decades ago. Much research simply builds, incrementally, on what has gone before. Assumptions are reinforced, myths perpetrated and are mistakes legitimised. However, every so often, a step-change occurs. Kuhn called it a paradigm shift. Several of the delegates think that business research—and board and governance research in particular—is on the cusp of such a paradigm shift.

In addition, many new relationships were formed, ideas for collegial working groups were discussed and several invitations were issued for cross-border and multinational cooperation. (Gosh, that sounds like the OECD or the United Nations!) I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing how the discussion builds and develops on Day 2, starting with Andrea Thompson's keynote.

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