In the wake of corporate scandals, many companies are looking more closely at how to manage business conduct worldwide. Realizing the complexity of this issue, Harvard Business School professors Rohit Deshpandé, Lynn S. Paine, and Joshua D. Margolis decided to evaluate standards of corporate conduct around the world—one of the most daunting research projects the three faculty have undertaken

Directors may not be all that independent, but their savvy advice often pays off.

Neither inside nor outside directors can adequately represent shareholder interests.

Because of the structure of their compensation, CEOs are rewarded for share price volatility not performance. So the volatility of the past four years has served them very well indeed. To understand how, let's model stock-based compensation in two possible worlds: A CEO whose stock has followed the S&P more or less exactly and a CEO whose stock has remained steady over the same period. Assume both took the reins on January 1, 2007 and are still there.

Seven essential questions every board must consider.

To avoid politics that lurk in the shadows, get the issues out in the open with a disciplined succession process.

While corporate board members take their jobs more seriously than ever, they are not necessarily as helpful or effective as they could be, says HBS senior lecturer Stephen Kaufman. He recently sat down with HBS Working Knowledge to discuss what he considers to be the biggest practical issues facing boards today.

A CEO's schedule is especially important to a firm's financial success, which raises a few questions: What do they do all day? Can they be more efficient time managers? HBS professor Raffaella Sadun and colleagues set out to find some answers.

How to get your board back on track.

Not everyone can—or should—get a seat at the table.

An old article discussing some of the complicated issues involved with pay and performance. UK-centric but addresses some universally relevant points.

When voting on a merger, shareholders of the acquiring firm may not always act in the best interest of the company.

For the most part, CEOs accept the board as their boss and as a valuable sounding board and source of input. But they don’t always get what they’re looking for from their boards. A common complaint among chief executives is that directors get into the weeds, digging into operational details that have little strategic value.

The difference between micromanaging and appropriate questioning is not always a bright line. What really defines micromanaging is not whether a director is digging into details. It’s really a question of which details, and for what purpose.

How CEOs can turn conflict, dissent, and disagreement into a powerful tool for driving performance.

A study by Stanford law and business faculty members casts strong doubt upon the value and validity of the ratings of governance advisory firms that compile indexes to evaluate the effectiveness of a publicly held company’s governance practices.

When a top team fails to function, it can paralyze a whole company. Here’s what CEOs need to watch out for.

Looking for the best CEO? A recent study finds that efficient and persistent decision makers trump good listeners.

Abstract:
We develop a methodology to collect and analyze data on CEOs' time use. The idea—sketched out in a simple theoretical set-up—is that CEO time is a scarce resource and its allocation can help us identify the firm's priorities as well as the presence of governance issues. We follow 94 CEOs of 600 top Italian firms over a pre-specified week and record the time devoted each day to different work activities. We focus on the distinction between time spent with insiders (employees of the firm) and outsiders (people not employed by the firm). Individual CEOs differ systematically in how much time they spend at work and in how much time they devote to insiders vs. outsiders. We analyze the correlation between time use, managerial effort, quality of governance, and firm performance and interpret the empirical findings within two versions of our model, one with effective and one with imperfect corporate governance. The patterns we observe are consistent with the hypothesis that time spent with outsiders is on average less beneficial to the firm and more beneficial to the CEO and that the CEO spends more time with outsiders when governance is poor.

For the sake of their companies—and their legacies—departing chief executives should leave things in the best possible shape. Here’s how.

Wharton finance professor Luke Taylor has heard the conventional wisdom that boards of directors often fail to do their jobs when it comes to firing underperforming CEOs. And while data shows that only 2% of Fortune 500 CEOs on average are fired each year, Taylor notes that there is no benchmark for judging whether that figure is "a lot or not enough." To address that question, Taylor modeled the decision to fire a CEO and estimated the gap between observed and optimal CEO firing rates. The results of his research are in a new paper titled, "Why Are CEOs Rarely Fired? Evidence from Structural Estimation."

Morten T. Hansen, a management professor at the University of California’s School of Information, and Herminia Ibarra, professor for organizational behaviour at Insead are attempting to do away with the usual rankings of top CEOs - who’s the most respected, the best paid, the most popular.

Can some CEOs be unaware of their own company? Sometimes the paradox is obvious to everyone - but them. Here are six areas every leader should check.

McKinsey's former managing director Ian Davis offers to new CEOs advice distilled from his experience supporting executives during their transitions into the role.

The educational pedigree of CEOs has no bearing on the long-term success of their companies.

Researchers find no connection between improved overall firm performance and the offering of stock option compensation to rank-and-file workers.