BETTER
PRACTICES
Board
Structure
Over recent years, one of the primary
approaches to improving governance effectiveness was
changing board structure. Those changes often
focused on reducing the size of the Board, and removing
or reducing geographic parameters in board composition.
In addition, organizations focused on governance models
and the competencies of Board members.
However, these changes have not result
in better governance for many organizations.
Recent research from the ASAE and CSAE Foundations1
suggests that effective Boards must be both:
-
Legitimate - stakeholders
perceive the board to represent all significant
interests and perspectives
-
Credible - the board is
viewed as knowledgeable and fair and that the board
process is considered rational.
The research also found that successful
boards may have a varied balance of legitimacy and
credibility, but they must have both to be effective.
As Boards move away from geographic
representation, the need for solid and reliable member
research becomes even more important if the Board wants
to continue to be perceived as legitimately representing
all stakeholders and interests.
Ineffective or missing Board policies
and processes related to how the Board works will enable
counter-productive behaviour of Board members. This
leads to poor Board performance, loss of credibility
with stakeholders and difficulties attracting good Board
candidates.
Making changes to Board structure may be
part of the solution to better governance, but only if
undertaken in conjunction with improving Board
representation and processes.
1
Source: Executive Summary of The Will To Govern Well,
ASAE, Glenn Tecker, Jean Frankel and Paul Meyer
The
practices described in this area are described as Better
Practices for a very good reason. We have a great
deal of difficulty with the term best practices
used in any other context than to refer to the results
of benchmarking exercises involving real and relevant
organizations with tangible results. We offer Better
Practices related to areas where we feel that change
is needed in associations. Better Practices
are intended to provoke thought, and to encourage
organizations to think about what they are doing and how
they are doing it.
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