Board Chairs’ Practicess across Countries

Co-authored by Tan Kai Foong

Relatively little is known about board chairs as most of their work is done behind closed doors.
They deal with highly sensitive matters but rarely appear in public. They have no executive power but preside over the most powerful body in the organisation the board of directors. Their performance is critically important for every company but they still need help to improve it. Yet they have no boss, no peers, no one to turn to for an advice. They learn mostly by trial and error. 
Utilizing hard data from a global structured questionnaire, 132 chairpersons across 30 countries responded to contribute to identifying effective practices that boards/chairs across can implement. The research provides valuable insights into their demographics, motivation, background, remuneration and the challenges they encounter.
 As a next step, a team of experts were assembled to conduct interviews with professional chairs in different parts of the world – Belgium, Denmark, Italy, the United Kingdom, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland, Denmark, and the Netherlands. This report presents our preliminary findings from those interviews.

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