A troubling trend.

• Position: EDITOR'S NOTE - Editorial

MY EYE CAUGHT the same Wall Street Journal article ("Coke Refreshes Aging Board") that attracted the attention of lead columnist Hoffer Kaback for comment in his piece on page 8. Hoffer critiques the ageism angle sparked by the article. But I was riveted by something different in it.

The article quotes a source "knowledgeable" about Coke's search for new directors who indicates that the board wants to recruit "people in their fifties, who they want to get 20 years from."

Twenty years? Really? A board seat locked up for two decades? Can you imagine how that person will change in 20 years? How the company (and management) will change? How the industry will change? Will a person who is right for a board in 2013 still have the right stuff in 2033? Questions, questions. ...

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I had been planning this cover story on board turnover--that is, the lack of board turnover (it is as low as it has been in a decade)--since early this year. So what the article on the Coke board did is affirm the need to take a close look at this troubling trend.

I turned to Dan Dalton to review the data and provide some analysis. Dan is a trusted hand at crunching board data. He is the founding and managing director of the Institute for Corporate Governance at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University and has written a number of authoritative pieces for us. Here is the subtitle I put on Dan's article: "The math is daunting, with directors bolding fast to their positions and companies doing limited cycling of their boards. Result: aging board's, constrained opportunities for women, and a frustrating recruiting environment."

The articles that accompany Dan's leadoff piece very much tie in to...