Research
The research output of the Centre includes the following
articles and case studies:
Taking Board Evaluation Beyond Simple Compliance: Director
Behaviour And Board Performance - Professor Bob
Garratt
Much of the current activity which passes for "Board Evaluation"
is little more than a simple check on compliance. Yet a moment's
thought shows that this must be nonsense because compliance is the
professional role of the company secretary and legal counsel under
the leadership of the Chairman. If a board is not compliant then it
cannot be evaluated effectively. Compliance needs to be assured
before board evaluation can start. Compliance is necessary but not
sufficient. Sufficiency comes from the major evaluative focus being
on board performance both around the boardroom table
and on its subsequent effect on total business performance. Many
boards find such an approach too difficult and tend to fall into a
low level of internal complicity based on the notion that if they
can show they are compliant then "a quick word or two with the
chairman" should allow them to stand before their owners at the AGM
and state that they have done their duty of annual evaluation.
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article.
The Myth of the 'Anglo-Saxon Model' of Corporate Governance
- Professor Bob Garratt
This essay, which appeared in the Journal of Business Strategy,
argues that many directors are never inducted and developed into
their board directoral roles. By not understanding their legal
roles and tasks as a director, as distinct from a manager, they can
rarely extract themselves for long enough to become skilled at
thinking strategically, assessing risks, and taking wise decisions.
The essay advocates the use of the Learning Board model, the
Thinking Intentions Profile psychometric, reading newspapers and
journals systematically and getting out more, as ways of creating
the conditions in which strategic thinking can be developed
effectively.
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article.
How Understanding Company Law Helps Develop Director's
Strategic Thinking - Professor Bob Garratt
This essay, which appeared in the Journal of Business Strategy,
argues that many directors are never inducted and developed into
their board directoral roles. By not understanding their legal
roles and tasks as a director, as distinct from a manager, they can
rarely extract themselves for long enough to become skilled at
thinking strategically, assessing risks, and taking wise decisions.
The essay advocates the use of the Learning Board model, the
Thinking Intentions Profile psychometric, reading newspapers and
journals systematically and getting out more, as ways of creating
the conditions in which strategic thinking can be developed
effectively.
Download the full
article.
Directors and Their Homework: Developing Strategic Thought
- Professor Bob Garratt
This paper makes the case for more systematic development of the
strategic thinking or "meta thinking" competences of directors, as
distinct from strategic planning. It reviews the historic
development of the terms "governance", "directing" and "learning".
It looks at the current political skewing towards board compliance
through Codes, which are making the acquisition of strategic
thinking skills more difficult, as well as the psychological
blocks, both personal and organisational, which reinforce this. It
proposes the development of "director's homework" as well as three
ways of encouraging the development of director's strategic
thinking: the encouragement of the use of "intelligent naivety",
the development of divergent thinking styles, and the profiling of
Thinking Intentions.
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article.
Organisational Change, Learning and Metrics: Hard and soft ways
to effective organisational change - Professor Bob
Garratt
This article explores the relationship between learning and
change in organisations as complex, dynamic, socio-technical
systems. Learning and change are caught in a cycle which when
completed has moved the individual to reinforce existing or develop
new values. All learning has a moral dimension whether for an
individual, group or organisation. Ultimately, that moral dimension
will be seen by the individual and others as good or bad. Learning
requires an awareness of self, personal and external critical
review and regular, conscious reflection.
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article.
Effective Board Leadership: Organising and Running a Board
- Professor Bob Garratt
This paper, delivered at the Henley Conference in 2006, explores
the seeming unreality of an outsider's views of the director's
world from two perspectives. First, from the "compliance-based"
view of boards and directors held by many legislators and
regulators, nationally and internationally, that compliance alone
is sufficient for effective corporate governance. Second, that all
corporate governance happens only around the boardroom table. The
paper attempts to show that both perspectives are not only wrong
but that they are cumulatively killing effective board working and,
in the long-term, effective wealth generation. Taken to the extreme
it argues that crass implementation and political naivety could do
more harm to capitalism than Karl Marx ever dreamed.
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Dilemmas, uncertainty, risks, and board performance -
Professor Bob Garratt
This paper argues that a deeper understanding of risk,
uncertainty, governance and development allows more effective
decision-taking in the boardroom. It argues that the role of the
board of directors is to balance and rebalance continuously their
irresolvable dilemma - "How do we drive our enterprise forward
while keeping it under prudent control?" It argues that it is the
board's role to focus on uncertainty, rather than risk, and this
requires a different set of intellectual skills from board members
to be able to cope with monitoring a range of diverse scenarios.
This is crucial for a board to develop stronger ways of both
leading their organisation and of ensuring the connectedness of the
learning within and between the board and the operational unit's
risk taking. To achieve this, a board must develop new ways of
learning - especially of thinking strategically and becoming more
sensitised to the dynamics of their changing external environments.
This will take them well beyond the comforts of their specialist
managerial disciplines and into the true world of directing.
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article.
Board performance, not just board conformance - Professor
Bob Garratt
In this article, Garratt explains effective corporate governance
as the exercise of the complex relationships between ownership,
power, trust and anticorruption processes in the boardroom. To be
effective it must be as much concerned with generating wealth for
society (board performance) as about staying rigidly within the
rules (board conformance). Board conformance is necessary but not
sufficient. Sufficiency comes through the exercise of appropriate
values, structures and processes in a board to generate added value
for the owners, private or public, to achieve their purpose within
the laws of their country. Garratt then explains his Learning Board
Model which he has developed over the past ten years. This model
covers the sequential flow of work for any board of directors,
namely policy formulation/foresight, strategic thinking (not
strategic planning), supervising management, and
accountability.
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article.