Fee: 1100 EUR

Programme coordinator & faculty:

• Morten Huse, BI Norwegian Business School, Norway (Programme Coordinator & Faculty)
• Jonas Gabrielsson, Halmstad University , Sweden
• Hans van Ees, University of Groningen, Netherlands
• Alessandro Zattoni,  LUISS University Rome., Italy
• Wafa Khlif, Toulouse Business School Barcelona.
• Alessandra Rigolini, Toulouse Business School Barcelona.

Programme objectives:

In this course we want to prepare students to do research about boards and governance that will make contributions, not only today, but also for the coming decades. Contributions, change, dynamics and actors are core concepts. The world is changing with escalating speed, and so also the corporate governance landscape.

This course has a focus on value creating boards, and it is a course about boards and governance from strategic management, entrepreneurship and organizational behaviour perspectives. The understanding of value creation and the human side will be focused. The objectives are to let the students explore and be a part of a stream of corporate governance research that is rooted in management theories and approaches. We will in the course introduce, explore and discuss topics, theories and methods, and we will challenge dominant concepts and wisdom about boards and corporate governance. The course will be in the interchange were micro meets macro.

Topics include board processes and team dynamics, board leadership, interactions and influences inside and outside the boardroom, board-management relationships, trust and power, norms and codes, values and value creation, board composition, including board capital, diversity, board members’ identities and compensation, ownership types and board structures. These topics will be discussed in light of the behavioral theory of the firm, team production theory, strategy as practice, CSR, sustainability, etc.

Boards and corporate governance will not only be discussed in light of listed corporations, but also in relation to family firms, entrepreneurial firms, etc. We will address the evolution of the corporate governance debate, including lessons from the present financial crisis and the era of digital transformation of society. Comparisons across countries and systems will be made.

The teaching mode will be interactive. The course will have three main parts:

• First, challenges from practice and existing knowledge will be introduced and discussed, and an accumulative sorting logic will be suggested. The recent discussions and research streams about women on boards will be used to illustrate core aspects of this sorting logic.
• Second, various issues will be explored in-depth based on discussion of selected articles.
• Third, the students will be challenged and supported in writing their own articles and research proposal based on the content of the course. Course evaluation will be done based on these efforts. Inputs from the publishing process will be given. The use of various research methods will be discussed throughout the course, including experiences from using various qualitative methods.