Competition amongst board members: effective or ineffective?

This paper addresses the question of how the competition amongst board members will impact the effectiveness of the board of directors in a firm. In the aim of answering to this research question, a literature review was first conducted by looking at the existing literature on the field of study. A board of director is composed of a chairman, and executive and/or non-executive directors, who represent the interests of the stakeholders. They have to control and monitor the firm, assist and challenge the management, and develop strategic plans. An effective board will achieve these objectives and solve the targeted problems encountered. It must be noted that various factors will impact this effectiveness, such as the board composition, size and diversity. Concerning the competition amongst board members, it can either be constructive or destructive. A qualitative approach was carried out for this study. Semi-directive, individual interviews were realized for 13 board members, aged from 47 to 82 years old. They were mostly coming from listed and non-listed multinational corporations. The findings and the discussion showed that the effectiveness of the competition depends on its level of constructiveness. Competition appears to be constructive when the board members are competing for a common goal, in the best interest of the firm. Indeed, in the case of a constructive competition, relevant elements are brought to the debate, and the competitors respect each other and collaborate for the firm. Besides, the final decision taken is better than the initial one, which makes the competition effective. On the contrary, in the case of a destructive competition, the board members will compete for more self-interested goals. In fact, the defeat of one competitor will tend to benefit to the other one. This means that the interest of the firm is secondary, indeed, the strategies and alliances will be done in the interest of the competitors. In this type of competition, the climate of the board will likely be full of tensions, and conflicts may appear. This does not make a board effective.