These concerns regarding corporate culture’s role in corporate governance have awakened a new interest in corporate culture among scholars in the fields of corporate finance, economics, management, and leadership, among others. Over the past ten years, relevant new theoretical and empirical work has been developed, with some promising results.
Some large institutional investors have recently announced their expectation that boards of directors will understand and discuss corporate culture in order to promote a culture that sets the right tone for their organization. Boards should reflect on how to insure that the firm’s culture supports its strategy. Currently, however, there are very few insights to inform boards of directors governing of corporate culture.
To address this underconsidered topic, this 2022 IESE-ECGI academic conference, sponsored by the Social Trends Institute, aimed to discuss these issues – with a cross-disciplinary approach – from the specific perspective of the board of directors as an organization’s top decision-maker.
In five distinct sessions, a distinguished scholar presented a recent paper and was followed by a discussant presentation. The event also included a roundtable in which CEOs and board chairs discussed the implications of corporate culture for boards of directors. The videotaped sessions are available here on YouTube.