Behavioral Determinants of Nonprofit Board Performance

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21137
• Author: Klaas Heemskerk,Eelke M. Heemskerk,Margrietha Wats
• Date: 01 June 2015
• Published date: 01 June 2015

417

N M  L, vol. 25, no. 4, Summer 2015 © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/nml.21137

Journal sponsored by the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University.

Correspondence to: Klaas Heemskerk, University of Amsterdam, Department of Political Science, Postbus 15578, 1001

NB, Amsterdam, Netherlands. E-mail: k.b.t.heemskerk@uva.nl.

Behavioral Determinants of Nonprofi t

Board Performance

THE CASE OF SUPERVISORY BOARDS IN DUTCH SECONDARY

EDUCATION

Klaas Heemskerk,1 Eelke M. Heemskerk,1,2 Margrietha Wats2

1University of Amsterdam, 2Galan Groep, Baarn

There is an increased awareness that the performance of boards (good governance) is not

only determined by structural determinants but by behavioral determinants as well. These

behavioral determinants might be particularly important for public and nonprofit gov-

ernance, where the role of the board is more diffuse and heterogeneous than in corporate

governance. Here we investigate how social dynamics within boards in secondary education

influence their performance. We follow a concise model that includes cognitive conflict,

the use of expertise, effort norms, and social cohesion as determinants of board task per-

formance. A survey among all secondary schools in the Netherlands serves as the empirical

underpinning for this process-oriented model of good governance. We show that the behav-

ioral determinants have different effects on the control task and advice task of boards. Also,

we find that cognitive conflicts in supervisory boards do not lead to less but rather to more

social cohesion within boards. Building on these findings, we suggest a revised model of the

behavioral determinants of nonprofit board performance.

Keywords: governance, boards, education, conflict, effort norms, use of knowledge and

skills, cohesion, nonprofit boards, board performance, board behavior

What Determines Board Performance?

 e lion share of research on the eff ectiveness of boards aims to establish a relation between

structural and formal characteristics of boards, such as the size or composition on the one

hand, and organizational performance, narrowly interpreted as financial results, on the

other (Di Pietra et al. 2008; Hermalin and Weisbach 1991). Reviews of this literature have

now come to the somewhat disappointing conclusion that the results are not encouraging

(for instance, Dalton and Dalton 2011).  e relation between formal characteristics and

organizational performance remains uncertain at best. The reason for these discouraging

results may well lay in the fact that much is going on in between board characteristics and