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Nearly half of UK board members are too scared to speak up, says new research

Governance | Vibeka Mair | 20 Oct 2010

Nearly half of all UK board members are too inhibited to address issues deemed ‘too sensitive’ in board meetings, according to research on global board best practice from Andrew Kakabadse, professor of international management development at the Cranfield School of Management.

Kakabadse shared the findings of nine years of research into the behaviour of 3,000 board members – private, voluntary and government - in 12 countries with the audience of Charity Finance Live 2010.

He found that most global boards exhibited fundamental divisions concerning the future of their organisations.

However, in most countries, more than half of people on boards were too inhibited to address these divisions as they were deemed ‘too sensitive’ to discuss.

This lack of dialogue, warned Kakabadse, could lead to fundamental failures at board levels.

The global research found that on average board members knew a failed company would collapse 50 months before it happened, but would do nothing to prevent it.

In the UK, Kakabadse found 30 per cent of boards were permanently fighting, while 47 per cent of UK board members never discussed issues deemed ‘too sensitive’.  

Further, 85 per cent of non-executive board members in the UK had no agreed view on the competitive advantage of their organisation.

And UK executives rated the value of their board and chair much lower than the rating the boards gave themselves.

Overall, Scottish executives rated their chair the lowest, while Australia had the most cohesive view on the value of the board and the chair.

Kakabadse noted that in Australia, the average number of directorships senior people held was four, whereas in the UK members of the House of Lords on average held 21 directorships.

He also said that sex or race appeared to make no difference to the performance of a board, regardless of location, but age did.

“Board directorships flourished at 60,” said Kakabadse. “At 60 chairs exhibited crystallised cognition. They were not as quick as their younger counterparts but they had the ability to crystallise a way forward and find something tangible where tension existed.”

When asked whether UK charities should pay their chairs, Kakabadse supported the premise, arguing that as a chair was key to the strategic direction of an organisation the role needed to be treated as a professional one.

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