Self assessments of corporate boards: Short overview of the literature

Abstract

Boards of directors play an important role when it comes to decision-making within companies, but board members as a team are ultimately responsible for their activities. There are three main roles of boards: monitoring, consulting, and strategic planning (He et al., 2020; Levrau & Van den Berghe, 2007; Zahra & Pearce, 1989). The role of boards has been debated in research, e.g., what tasks boards should perform. In addition, scholars have approached the role of boards from different theoretical perspectives and defined the role of boards in a broad, even in some cases contradictory way (Åberg et al., 2019; Jansen, 2021; Levrau & Van den Berghe, 2007; Nicholson & Kiel, 2004a; Zahra & Pearce, 1989). Furthermore, it is unclear how boards work; how they go about fulfilling their roles and the various tasks that come with it (Leblanc & Schwartz, 2007; Jansen, 2021). Since the year