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The Independent Director in Society: Our current crisis of governance and what to do by Gerry Brown, Andrew Kakabadse and Filipe Morais (view source)
Revision as of 14:12, 11 December 2020
, 14:12, 11 December 2020no edit summary
Lead author, Gerry Brown feels that the relationship between the executive members of boards and the independent directors (formerly known as non-executive directors), trustees or governors of organisations is frequently unbalanced. The function of the independent director is to have general oversight of the executive side of the board - to spot when and where things are going wrong - but all too often the relationship is too cosy, too antagonistic or the independent director lacks the knowledge and/or experience to understand what's happening or to know how to intervene. Covid-19 has highlighted the ''failings and weaknesses of leadership and governance'' and you might be tempted to think that these are extraordinary times and that all will be well once we get back to 'normal' but a pandemic was predicted and modelled in the past and there has been a general failure to prepare for what has happened - and is still happening.
Most of the ''The Independent Director in Society'' was written ''before'' the pandemic took hold: the in-depth research (by Henley Business School) behind the book was completed even earlier. Andrew Kakabadse and Filipe Morais are both professors at the Henley Business School: although Gerry Brown is very much the lead author, the book could not have come about without the work of Kakabadse and Morais. Whilst there are comments about the pandemic the content is almost exclusively based on the situation beforehand. Even at that stage, it was doubtful whether many organisations were in a position to respond adequately and promptly to a crisis or to make informed decisions quickly.
In [[The Independent Director: The Non-Executive Director's Guide to Effective Board Presence by Gerry Brown|The Independent Director]], Gerry Brown the authors looked primarily at the Independent Director in business. In ''The Independent Director in Society'', his their focus is on the NHS, universities, sporting organisations and charities, which should be run on business lines but often are not. One problem might be the size and composition of boards which might hinder their decision-making ability. The boards tend to look much the same: they're usually older and often retired. The average university board is 60% male and 94% white British. In sport, it's 65% male and 93% white British: it doesn't take much thought to realise that the boards are not representative of their stakeholders.
There's then the problem with the calibre of the independent directors. Too often they're associated with the chairman or the CEO - giving the impression that they're there to rubberstamp what the executive proposes: they're not truly 'independent'. Sometimes they're there to tick a box - the token woman, BAME or disabled person on the board rather than being there on merit. Many independent directors don't seem to be engaged with their organisations: a frighteningly large percentage had no contact with stakeholders. It was occasionally difficult to assume that they were taking their responsibilities seriously or that the institutions were really fit for purpose.