What Do Boards Really Do? Evidence from Minutes of Board Meetings
What Do Boards Really Do? Evidence from Minutes of Board Meetings
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DOI：
10.2139/ssrn.1940433
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发表时间：
2011-10
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Miriam Schwartz-Ziv;M. Weisbach
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Miriam Schwartz-Ziv;M. Weisbach
摘要我们分析了一个独特的数据库，从一个样本的真实世界的董事会会议和董事会委员会会议的11个商业公司，以色列政府持有大量的股权。我们使用这些数据来评估董事会模型的基本假设和预测。这些模型通常分为两类：“管理模型”，假设董事会在管理公司中发挥直接作用，“监督模型”，假设董事会监督高层管理人员，但不做商业决策。与监督模型一致，我们基于分钟的数据表明，董事会花了大部分时间来监督管理：大约三分之二的董事会讨论的问题是监督性质的，在99%的讨论问题中，他们只有一个选择，他们只有2.5%的时间不同意首席执行官。尽管如此，董事会有时确实发挥着管理作用：董事会要求获得进一步的信息或讨论的问题的8%的更新，他们对其中的8.1%采取了主动。在63%的会议中，董事会至少采取了其中一项行动，或者没有投票支持首席执行官。总之，我们的研究结果表明，董事会可以被定性为积极的监视器。
Abstract We analyze a unique database from a sample of real-world boardrooms — minutes of board meetings and board-committee meetings of eleven business companies for which the Israeli government holds a substantial equity interest. We use these data to evaluate the underlying assumptions and predictions of models of boards of directors. These models generally fall into two categories: “managerial models” that assume boards play a direct role in managing the firm, and “supervisory models” that assume that boards monitor top management but do not make business decisions themselves. Consistent with the supervisory models, our minutes-based data suggest that boards spend most of their time monitoring management: approximately two-thirds of the issues boards discussed were of a supervisory nature, they were presented with only a single option in 99% of the issues discussed, and they disagreed with the CEO only 2.5% of the time. Nevertheless, at times boards do play a managerial role: Boards requested to receive further information or an update for 8% of the issues discussed, and they took an initiative with respect to 8.1% of them. In 63% of the meetings, boards took at least one of these actions or did not vote in line with the CEO. Taken together our results suggest that boards can be characterized as active monitors.