Inside the Boardroom

DR. RICHARD LEBLANC is an award-winning teacher and researcher, certified management consultant, professional speaker, professor, lawyer and specialist on boards of directors. He is an Assistant Professor of Corporate Governance, Law & Ethics at the Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies, York University. DR. JAMES GILLIES is Professor Emeritus of Policy and founding Dean of the Schulich School of Business at York University. Before joining York, he spent fifteen years as a member of the faculty of the School of Business at UCLA. Professor Gillies has also served as a Member of Parliament and senior policy adviser to the Prime Minister of Canada, and is a member of the Order of Canada.

• Foreword xvAcknowledgements xixIntroduction 1Chapter 1: Boards of Directors Have Failed and We Don’t Know Why 5Chapter 2: The Many Forms of the Modern Corporation 31Chapter 3: Contemporary Directors: Who Are They, What Do They Do, and How Well Do They Do It? 49Chapter 4: Best Board Practices and Assessments: Necessary but Not Enough 81Chapter 5: The Traditional Board: The Triumph of Structure 105Chapter 6: The Effective Board: Function Not Form 133Chapter 7: Effective Directors for Effective Boards: Putting Them Together 153Chapter 8: The Director Behavioural Types 171Chapter 9: A Special Type of Director: The Chair of the Board 201Chapter 10: “C-B-S-R”—How to Build a Better Board 221Chapter 11: The Coming Revolution in Corporate Governance 245Appendix A: Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methodologies: How Do They Differ? 259Appendix B: The Research Process: Getting into the Boardrooms, Obtaining the Interviews and Analyzing the Data 263Bibliography 285Index 299