Boardroom Cultural Governance : An Examination of the Beliefs and Values of Board Directors and Executive Management in U.S. Based Multinational Corporations (MNCs)

What transpires in the boardroom is receiving heightened scrutiny due to recent financial failures (i.e., Enron, WorldCom, etc.) and the global financial crisis in 2008. The belief is that the board directors and the executive management team contributed greatly to these crises (Boerner, 2011). This study responds to the appeal to examine the “black box” (Barratt and Korac-Kakabadse, 2002) of boardroom governance and the roles of board directors and executive managers from a behavioral perspective in contrast to the traditional structural framework approach to corporate governance to enhance our understanding of what really transpires in the boardroom, and how and why. Twenty-four respondents were asked to describe their first-hand knowledge of two boardroom decision scenarios, eliciting individual and group beliefs, values and inferred behaviors of the board and executive team members from US multinational corporations. This study represents a first step at opening the black box of boardroom cultural governance