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Strengthen The Board

Empowering the Board By: Lorsch, Jay W. Harvard Business Review, Jan/Feb95, Vol. 73, Issue 1
Empowering board means bringing more and more outside directors who have the capability to monitor the company’s performance and if find any kind of malpractice then the power to even remove the corporate leadership. This paper talks about the driving forces behind the empowerment of the board, invalid assumptions about the empowerment by the top management, the factors affecting the directors’ role, the sources of the directors’ power, the ways for empowering the board, the directors’ responsibilities and lastly how can directors make this empowerment more effective.
But the power and authority always comes with some responsibilities. The board also has some very important responsibilities. They should ensure that the accounting norms are being followed strictly and the financials don’t have any anomaly. They should also keep an eye on the employees conduct. They should evaluate CEO’s performance and the succession planning. They should involve themselves more in approving company’s major projects. The board can make this empowerment more effective by gaining the knowledge and information about the current business situation as well as the company’s functioning. They should also self monitor themselves to know the areas of improvement.
What Makes Great Boards Great. By: Sonnenfeld, Jeffrey A.. Harvard Business Review, Sep2002, Vol. 80 Issue 9
This article has been written on the back drop of the meltdown and the fall of some of the big companies like Enron, Adelphia etc.The author has pointed finger over the board’s role in these companies. In this article through some of these examples, the author wants to prove that, though all the control mechanisms were there still the crisis took place.
Through this article the author criticizes the conventional wisdom to make only structural changes to make the board as well as company stronger .This article tries to...