The need for boardroom diversity is well-established. Many European countries have mandated that at least 40% of directors of publicly listed companies must be women, and similar laws have been passed in several U.S. states establishing gender- or race-based quotas. And to be sure, these policies have led to substantial progress: For example, one report found that representation of women on FTSE boards has grown eightfold in the last 25 years, from 5% up to 40%. But is simply changing the composition of boards enough to ensure that diverse perspectives are actually integrated into decision making...

Imagine that your family owns and controls a fifth-generation multinational conglomerate that’s a leader in the food manufacturing industry. You’ve recently been appointed to serve on the board as a family director from your generation. Early in your tenure, Covid-19 hits and suddenly, fundamental questions that challenge the very viability of the enterprise confront a board that’s dominated by a non-family CEO and a majority of independent directors...

Governing a family business is like sailing a ship. Indeed, the term governing itself comes from the Greek word for “guiding or steering.” Any family that owns a family business must consider where their family business is headed. That’s determined by who is steering the business and in what direction they’re headed...

Shareholder cultivation in the age of stakeholder capitalism requires management to identify steward shareholders and then foster symbiotic relationships with them. The authors offer four sets of tools managers can use to cultivate steward shareholders...

Organizations are increasingly making firm commitments to sustainability. More than 700 of the largest 2,000 publicly traded companies have made net zero commitments, with 59 of the FTSE 100 committing to net zero emissions by 2050. Two-thirds the S&P 500 have set emission reduction targets of some kind...

For a long time, we have believed that strong corporate governance is enough to prevent CEO malfeasance. However, new research shows that the lifestyle behaviors of executives can spell trouble for companies, regardless of the guardrails in place...

In balancing the risks of a pandemic, the climate crisis, social unrest, and global supply-chain issues, business leaders, policymakers, and investors around the world have been working on developing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategies—making ESG an essential business priority...

Diversity on corporate boards is an urgent priority, emphasized by company leaders and public policy agendas. For example, in 2021 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved a rule requiring most companies on the Nasdaq exchange to have at least two directors from underrepresented groups...

A recent European Corporate Governance Institute paper compared the ESG scores of companies invested in by 684 U.S. institutional investors that ...

There’s a new title in the C-suite: chief ESG officer. While top executives with “ESG” in their title are new and not yet widespread, this role is an opportunity that companies may consider as they face increasing pressure to address environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues...

How boards can align executives’ incentives with the priorities of their employees, customers, and communities...

We have some optimistic news to kick off 2022: Climate change is at long last on the corporate-governance agenda, according to our research. When we surveyed 301 directors of companies headquartered in 43 countries, three-quarters of our respondents said they recognize climate as very important to their companies’ strategic success...

After nearly a year of review, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has approved a proposal from Nasdaq to enhance diversity and inclusion in company board rooms. The U.S.-based stock exchange will now require all listed companies to disclose board-level diversity using a standard template...

When companies are surprised by activist shareholders it’s often because management and the board don’t have a good idea of what investors are thinking and what their hot-buttons issues are...

If your organization hasn’t yet realized that your people are your number one asset, you are behind your competitors...

The executive pay “clawback,” an idea that had its debut during the discussion around the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002, has become an increasingly common provision in executive compensation packages...

Three years ago, PwC reported some good news from our 2018 Annual Corporate Directors Survey: The vast majority of public company directors said that they recognized the value of including more women and people of color in the boardroom...

In 2018, the clean tech darling Nikola posted a video of its new electric truck driving down a remote stretch of road, framed by dramatic music and a setting sun. The caption read: “Behold, the 1,000 HP, zero-emission Nikola One semi-truck in motion.”...

This issue of Harvard Business Review includes, as many prior issues did, an article decrying the perils of short-termism and supporting measures for insulating corporate leaders from the outside pressures that allegedly make them myopic...

While we have seen unparalleled innovation in the 21st century, we have also witnessed the damaging unintended consequences of unchecked technologies...

Critics charge that in today’s heavily traded capital markets, executives are increasingly incentivized to manage in tiny, short-term windows, with an eager eye on their stock-based compensation and a fearful one on activist hedge funds. In any case, something isn’t working: The number of... 

Sometimes it takes something bad to instigate something good. A hard lesson — a scandal, a breach, a product failure — can make us look at a problem head-on and ask ourselves how to fix it...

New technologies have been disrupting business for decades, especially since the internet became widespread in the late 1990s. But a new wave of innovation, centered on artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and the internet of things, is now intensifying the pace and magnitude of disruption...

Since the onset of Covid-19, corporate boards have faced a string of difficult decisions. Take the question of dividend payments: Ordinarily, the decision would be a relatively straightforward matter of applying a stated dividend policy, following past practice, or choosing an amount based on shareholder expectations and the company’s earnings for the period...