Morten Huse is Professor of Innovation and Economic Organization at the Norwegian School of Management and Visiting Long-Term Research Professor in the Department of Strategy at Bocconi University, Milan.

• Foreword; 1. Understanding boards and governance; 2. Internal and external actors: defining corporate governance; 3. Board task expectations: contributions from theory; 4. The board members; 5. Context and resources; 6. Interactions: trust, power and strategizing; 7. Structures and codes, norms and leadership; 8. Decision-making: the boardroom culture; 9. Actual board task performance; 10. The value creating board; 11. An ABC of boards; Appendix; Endnotes; Index; References.

'This book successfully combines the value creation and the behavioural and ethical approaches to the study of boards, offering a systemic framework which contributes to both the practitioner and the academic debate. I'm especially pleased to see that the subject of corporate governance is deployed with reference to all classes of firms and to different stages of their life, whereas most literature is still concentrated on large listed companies. The book suggests a wide range of different views and interpretations of the roles of boards and governance in our society.' Giuseppe Airoldi, Bocconi University, Italy