Decoding the CEO-board relationship : strategic decision making and monitoring in entrepreneurial firms
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- While the CEO-board relationship has been a subject of extensive scholarly inquiry, prior literature overlooks the CEO's perspective on the CEO-board relationship, and almost exclusively focuses on public firms to the neglect of ventures. To explore the CEO's perspective, I use inductive multiple-case study methods to examine how CEOs use their boards effectively to make board-level strategic decisions. The emergent theoretical framework suggests that CEOs launch the decision making process by seeking advice from directors through a dyadic, role-centered approach. Subsequently, CEOs propose a decision rather than suggesting alternatives to the board. They mainly discuss strategy in special-purpose meetings, not during the board meetings, and finally, they use political actions to close the decisions. A key insight is that CEOs who are more effective at board-level strategic decision making seek advice but also maintain power in the decision making process. To explore boards in ventures, I develop a theoretical framework on the monitoring function of venture boards. I build upon the unique characteristics of ventures that distinguish them from public firms, and focus on those aspects of board monitoring that are distinctive to ventures. The propositions focus on the attributes of the venture and the composition of the board as drivers of board monitoring, and the implications for venture performance. Overall, this study contributes to the theories of corporate governance by proposing a new, effective model of the CEO-board relationship where the CEO flips the traditional principal-agent relationship so that he or she becomes the principal and the board members become agents. Further, this study highlights the under-emphasized "principal problem" in the CEO-board relationship and recognizes that this relationship actually comprises several CEO-director dyadic relationships. Key words: corporate governance, strategic decision making, advice, power, monitoring, entrepreneurship.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2011 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Garg, Shubham |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Management Science and Engineering |
| Primary advisor | Eisenhardt, Kathleen M |
| Thesis advisor | Eisenhardt, Kathleen M |
| Thesis advisor | Byers, Thomas (Thomas H.) |
| Thesis advisor | Katila, Riitta |
| Thesis advisor | O'Reilly, Charles A |
| Thesis advisor | Sutton, Robert |
| Advisor | Byers, Thomas (Thomas H.) |
| Advisor | Katila, Riitta |
| Advisor | O'Reilly, Charles A |
| Advisor | Sutton, Robert |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Shubham Garg. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Management Science and Engineering. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph. D.)--Stanford University, 2011. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2011 by Shubham Garg
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...