Tomorrow’s Corporate Boardroom: Information,

Performance Management and Technology

Robert J. Thomas, Michael Schrage, Joshua B. Bellin and George Marcotte

Research Report
June 2008
Tomorrow’s Corporate Boardroom: Information, Performance Management and Technology · June 2008

Managers and directors alike face tough choices as they decide on the
quality and quantity of information the board receives and uses in its
governance and fiduciary roles. As the fallout from recent crises such as the
sub-prime mortgage debacle illustrates, both sides must address the problem
of “information asymmetry” – the gap between the information available
to management and to the board. Our research suggests that tomorrow’s
boardroom will be reshaped by three related forces: a thorough rethinking
of directors’ information needs brought on by concerned stakeholders;
dramatic improvements in the performance management approaches used
to guide boards’ decision making; and the adoption of technologies that
support critical board functions.

Introduction
Following recent high-profile reversals
in the financial-services industry, pres-
sure on boards from shareholder activists
and regulators to prevent such meltdowns
has intensified. But boards aren’t likely
to take more initiative for assessing
their companies’ performance unless
they have access to relevant information
when they need it.
We believe that information will
increasingly be viewed as critical to
both superior governance and effective
performance management at the board
level. For directors especially, focusing
on information processes in the board-
room will allow them to demonstrate
that they are fulfilling their obligations
as fiduciaries in making informed
business judgments.
Surprisingly little attention has been
paid to the quality and timeliness of
information-sharing between manage-
ments and boards. Given that director
independence has been a highly public
issue since the demise of Enron, we
believe that it will soon be considered
troubling that independent directors—
those particularly entrusted with
responsibility to protect shareholder
interests—are often dependent on
management for the very thing they
are expected to examine, assess and
oversee: information about management’s
performance and the company’s risks.
We refer to this state of affairs as
“information asymmetry.” Despite the
growing availability of information about
publicly traded companies—for exam-
ple, via electronic filings and financial
analyses on the Internet—directors all
too often rely solely on information
that comes from management when
they make boardroom decisions.
As one recent study on corporate gov-
ernance emphasizes, “the board’s ability
to provide meaningful oversight and
useful advice is determined by the
quality, timeliness and credibility of the
information it has. And it’s clear to us
that most boards have a long way to
go in this area.”1 A major fiduciary
responsibility of boards is to protect
shareholder interests, and investors
might reasonably ask how independent
directors can faithfully fulfill their fidu-
ciary duties if their information is not
independent, as well. (See “Agency
theory and information asymmetry.”)

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Tomorrow’s Corporate Boardroom: Information, Performance Management and Technology · June 2008
Agency theory and
information asymmetry
The notion that corporate boards
should be independent from manage-
ment derives largely from agency
theory.2 According to agency theory,
management acts as an agent of the
company’s owners or shareholders;
however, an inherently self-interested
management team can—if left
unchecked—pursue priorities that may
be at odds with owners’ best interests.
To counter this dilemma, boards of
directors are established to monitor
management’s performance and to use
levers such as compensation to align
management’s behaviors with owners’
interests. To safeguard shareholders’
interests, boards should not be closely
associated with management.
In addition to justifying the indepen-
dence of directors themselves, agency
theory addresses the role of information.
The theory suggests that management at
all times knows more about the business
than the company’s shareholders do,
and this information asymmetry is one
of the key factors that allows manage-
ment to pursue goals that are divergent
from shareholders’ interests in the first
place. It follows, therefore, that to be
truly effective in protecting shareholders’
interests, a board of directors needs to
overcome this information asymmetry –
in other words, it must have a firm grasp
of the business and the risks it faces.
3 | Accenture Institute for High Performance Business | Copyright © 2008 Accenture. All rights reserved.
In figure 1, we suggest that each side Disputes are possible between manage-
has knowledge of itself and situations ment and the board when the line
it faces and knowledge about the other between management’s knowledge (for
side (and the situation it faces). Equally, example, of operations) is challenged by
each side has blind spots: things it doesn’t the board’s quest for further discussion
know about itself and things it doesn’t or review.
know about the other. The nature and
quality of interaction between parties is The danger zone is the space where
always affected by how much they know neither management nor the board have
about each other – about each other’s knowledge about a situation (for
interests and objectives, fears and aspi- example, competitor behavior, legal
rations. As the figure reveals, four types or ethical terrain).
of interactions can be identified:
Open discussion or review is possible
when each side reveals what it knows to
the other.
Boards fulfill their role as advisor when
members share insights and experiences
with management.
Figure 1
When the board is left uninformed about critical management issues, the
resulting information asymmetry can lead to disputes and also to the creation
of “danger zones” in which the board and management are equally unaware
of looming problems.
Known to Management Unknown to Management
Known to board Open discussion / review Board as advisor
Unknown to board Disputed territory Danger zone
Tomorrow’s Corporate Boardroom: Information, Performance Management and Technology · June 2008
In this research report, which draws on
interviews with directors, shareholders,
regulators and other key stakeholders,
we offer three broad conclusions:
1. The pressure on both management
and boards to address information
asymmetry is likely to increase.
2. High-quality information is as vital
to effective governance as it is to supe-
rior enterprise performance.
3. Technological solutions will dramati-
cally improve the ability of boards to
identify, acquire, analyze and act on the
most relevant information.
The pressure builds
Companies should be increasingly con-
cerned about their board’s information
process for three major reasons. First,
because recent crises have starkly
illustrated why boards should want
critical performance and risk information;
second, because the standards governing
boardroom information are liable to
change; and third, because information
asymmetry within companies may
prove more difficult to alter than
forward-thinking managers and
directors might anticipate.
Addressing non-routine circumstances
In November 2007, a Wall Street Journal
op-ed by a former bank executive
explicitly assigned to banking boards
of directors a significant share of blame
for the recent crisis in the industry.
4 | Accenture Institute for High Performance Business | Copyright © 2008 Accenture. All rights reserved.
“The handwriting has been on the wall
for some time...and bank boards have
made little effort to read it.”3 The
mortgage crisis highlighted complex
questions for corporate governance:
What is the minimum amount and
kind of information directors need to
make prudent business judgments and
effective decisions?
The question of how much and what
kinds of information should make their
way into the boardroom may be most
salient when unexpected events arise.
When a surprising or unexpected decline
in financial performance is reported,
for example, or a potentially material
ethical lapse is revealed, directors may
not be able to rely solely on information
from management. They may feel com-
pelled by duty and law to seek sources
of information that are free from man-
agement’s interpretations, analyses and
biases – especially if they would later
want to demonstrate that they had acted
in an informed and independent manner.
Making sure that boards have such
information may mitigate crises once
they begin, but addressing the board’s
information needs may also help to
prevent crises from occurring. For
example, might bank boards have inter-
vened earlier if they had an accurate
picture of their banks’ risk exposures?
Rather than treating the board primarily
as a monitor that should be exposed to
only the most relevant and “processed”
information, management may instead
want to see the board as a necessary
counterweight to otherwise unchecked
risks. Surveys consistently show, in fact,
that directors are keen to serve this
role and to engage management in
discussions of strategic risk.4
Preparing for new standards
Managers and directors should also be
aware that the regulatory and legal
regime governing information in the
boardroom is changing. The current
laws in the United States describing
the role that information should play
in the boardroom to assure good gov-
ernance are particularly liable to evolve
because they are confused, conflicted
and unclear.
At the heart of the issue is the business
judgment rule, a legal concept that
protects directors in case they make bad
business decisions. The rule states that
a court of law will not decide on the
wisdom of a board’s business decision so
long as “the directors of a corporation
acted on an informed basis, in good
faith and in the honest belief that the
action taken was in the best interests
of the company.”5 Yale’s Ira Millstein, a
leading governance scholar and lawyer,
observes that the business judgment
rule provides little guidance to board
members: “Directors are supposed to
act on an ‘informed basis’ – but after
that, you’re in never-never land.” Legal
linkages between the quality of infor-
mation and the quality of business
judgment are poorly defined, if defined
at all.
We believe that both managers and
directors should be prepared for the
emergence of stricter standards for
boardroom information practices.
Several plausible scenarios can be
described. In addition to potential
changes introduced by Congress and
Tomorrow’s Corporate Boardroom: Information, Performance Management and Technology · June 2008
the courts, these scenarios illustrate
changes that may result from the efforts
of activist investors, private equity firms,
regulators and management itself:
Activist investors clamor to
know. Activist and institutional
investors, frustrated by unpleasant
surprises, restatements or disclosures
that are inadequate to their perceived
needs, demand greater transparency
from the board. Either through collabo-
ration during investor forums where
the board meets with key shareholders,
or perhaps as a result of a successful
proxy battle, boards may agree to work
with both management and investors
to come up with “investor important”
performance indicators for public
disclosure. In essence, boards will be
forced to reveal what information they
deem important enough to justify
their decisions.
Sophisticated shareholders insist on
sophisticated boardroom information.
Hedge funds and institutional investors
have already demonstrated that they
can garner a very thorough under-
standing of a company’s performance
and risks—perhaps more than the
typical board itself can—by using pub-
licly available data and highly advanced
analytics. The vice chairman of a large
financial services company explained
in a recent interview that these devel-
opments will make it harder for board
members to use lack of knowledge as
an excuse for inaction: “You would
expect the board member to have
known [as much as the investors]
because [the information] is available to
people who are willing to dig.” In this
scenario, board members accept that
they need better information and more
sophisticated analytics in order to
demonstrate that they are acting
on an informed basis.
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Private equity firms claim they know
“best practice.” Private equity partners,
in an effort to assert their claim to an
investor premium, argue that their com-
panies enjoy success not only because of
improved strategic positioning and
increased operational efficiencies but
also because of superior governance.
Private equity ownership, they argue,
improves governance, whereas in public
companies, weak governance and over-
sight undermine the value of the firm.
According to this scenario, private
equity’s success creates a competitive
benchmarking opportunity for publicly
traded companies, which import pri-
vate-equity governance best practices.
Regulatory change broadens the
board’s information role. Regulators
turn SEC Chairman Christopher Cox’s
vision of real-time reporting and
real-time analysis of business results
into reality. New digital disclosures
allow technology-savvy analysts to
decide which performance metrics are
the most important to follow for any
given company.6 The board’s time in
this scenario would increasingly be
invested in assessing to what extent
these “investor important“ performance
indicators should be used to guide or
inform management action. In this
environment, the board could become
a more dominant institution—publicly
defining which metrics will be used
to steer the enterprise—or a more
populist endeavor in which independent
directors interpret their fiduciary
obligation to mean that they must
select the best of the analysts’ metrics
to oversee the firm.
Management takes the lead. Much the
same way that Jack Welch asserted that
GE must be number one or two in an
industry or exit it, a Fortune 25 global
firm could publicly declare that its
board must be as remarkable as its
management. In other words, superior
governance would be deemed as essen-
tial to sustainable success as superior
operations. In this scenario, the board
would devise performance parameters
to measure its own effectiveness, which
it would then synthesize and present
for investors. This disclosure would soon
be accepted as a standard practice, and
boardroom process would become
increasingly transparent.
Confronting the status quo
In spite of looming changes that may
foster stricter standards, most compa-
nies have been slow to adapt, for sev-
eral reasons. (See “Information asym-
metry: what the surveys say.”)
Information asymmetry:
what the surveys say
Recent surveys of corporate boards
reveal that directors are often largely
dependent on management for the
information they receive:
More than two-thirds of directors in
one study lacked access to independent
information channels.7
In another study, independent directors
were found to be less satisfied with the
financial, operational and strategic
information they receive than their
non-independent counterparts.8
Only 10 percent of directors in a third
study could obtain company informa-
tion through an online board portal.9
Tomorrow’s Corporate Boardroom: Information, Performance Management and Technology · June 2008
First, directors, managers and the cor-
porate counsel may be cautious when it
comes to altering the dynamics of the
manager-director relationship. Enhanced
information in the boardroom might
encourage directors to aggressively
challenge management’s assumptions
and projections, thereby undermining
a spirit of trust and openness. The
relationship could even become coun-
terproductive and adversarial, with
board members reacting more like
managers than overseers.10
Second, exposure to more information
may pose difficulties for directors, as
we discovered in a recent focus group
of independent directors. Adding more
required information—whether in the
form of additional details on financial
figures, third-party analyst reports or
peer comparisons—may further over-
burden directors. The focus group
underscored that directors do not always
feel they have the specialized skills and
knowledge required to understand and
interpret more information. For example,
tools that made it possible for them to
test different strategic scenarios or
financial maneuvers might be beyond
the competence of some board mem-
bers. Altering the method and format
of information delivery—for example,
switching from physical board books to
an online portal—might raise concerns
about directors’ computer literacy and
the platform’s security.
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Third, boardroom behavior is often
shaped by cultural norms that are slow
to change. In our conversations with
directors, we repeatedly heard how the
culture of a board determines its
propensity to ask management additional
questions. One board member revealed
that it is typically the new directors,
especially those who were recently in
management, who are more likely to
request further details – often to the
consternation of more experienced
directors. Barring new guidelines on
information or internal crises that may
serve as an immediate prompt for
change, it is unlikely to expect most
boards to closely examine the role of
information in their decision making.
We believe that these obstacles can be
overcome when directors and managers
work together to improve the board’s
assessment of company performance –
a key governance activity that relies
heavily on an effective boardroom
information strategy.
Boardroom information and
performance management
Directors and managers break free of
the status quo by actively questioning
whether the board can successfully
assesses the company’s performance with
the information it has. While directors will
receive most of their information from
management, this does not inherently
mean that performance management at
the board level is impossible. Rather, it’s
the type of information that the board
receives from management that can either
greatly help or tremendously hinder
their performance management efforts.
At one extreme, if data is selectively and
self-servingly chosen by management
for presentation to the board, and the
board’s impression of the data is largely
defined by management analyses and
explanations, then directors clearly can-
not accurately assess the company’s
performance. At the other extreme,
however, if the board is overwhelmed
with comprehensive yet raw data with
little explanation, then effectively
assessing the company’s performance
would also be difficult. How can a com-
pany’s management and board avoid
both of these traps?
The core of any solid and healthy
information relationship between man-
agement and directors is an agreement
about performance metrics that are
aligned with the company’s strategy.
(See “What are the right metrics?”)
When managers and board members
come to an agreement about the most
useful metrics to track and assess, the
benefits to board-level performance
management are threefold:
1. A rigorous discussion about the prop-
er business metrics can serve to build trust
between management and the board.
2. Basing their performance assess-
ments on key performance metrics
lessens the burden on the board to
decode reams of data and at the same
time frees them from a dependence on
management’s analyses.
3. Knowing that management has a
clear view of which performance metrics
are most important to executing strategy
or operations allows board members
Tomorrow’s Corporate Boardroom: Information, Performance Management and Technology · June 2008

to better focus their time and energies

on the most important and pressing
performance issues.

Ideally, the metrics that are communi-

cated to the board would be the same as
those that management uses to assess
company performance. According to
John Mahoney, CFO and vice chairman
of office products retailer Staples, “We
use the same key performance indicators
in our monthly board update that we use
in our operating reviews with business
units.” He believes that there are clear
benefits to this practice: “If the board
understands we are trying to help them
understand the business, and [directors]
effectively rely on our information, it
facilitates a trustful conversation.”

Building trust is only the beginning. When

a company’s management and board
have candid and direct conversations
about the most appropriate performance
metrics for the company’s strategy, it
allows directors to weigh in construc-
tively on issues of enterprise strategy and
risk. Management can feel comfortable
drawing on its directors’ collective insights,
experience and judgment, and directors
can be confident that the information
they receive reflects the most critical
and up-to-date performance metrics.
Mahoney notes that the practice of
sharing management’s key performance
indicators with the board is relatively
unusual. As the debate about informa-
tion asymmetry climbs higher on the
corporate governance agenda, however,
more and more boards will be required to
consider such solutions. Communicating
key performance metrics to directors
for board-level performance assessment
7 | Accenture Institute for High Performance Business | Copyright © 2008 Accenture. All rights reserved.
is a way of overcoming information
asymmetry and its potentially negative
consequences for director independence.
Technology solutions
To effectively oversee the business,
boards need management to grant
them access to the right information.
Once granted, new technology can help
them obtain and use that information.
It is inevitable that boardroom informa-
tion will go on-line (once information
security issues are addressed) and the
use of interactive, mobile and social
networking technologies rises. As a new
generation of executives join boards, they
will bring these tools and technologies
with them. Scorecard or dashboard
applications that are currently available
can assist directors: visualization tools
and alerts. (See “Visualizing a directors’
dashboard.”)
What are the right metrics?
Performance metrics are often a set of
forward-looking indicators (strategic
and operational, financial and non-
financial) that best measure a company’s
performance. While any company would
want to track revenue, operating
income and profits, the metrics that
executives and directors might find
most useful to track could vary
substantially between industries:
Operational metrics for a retail chain
might include close-rates per number of
customers who come into the stores,
in-stock levels and speed of delivery rates.
An energy company may focus its
metrics on throughput diagnostics of
its supply portfolio in order to maxi-
mize asset utilization of wells or mines.
In high-tech manufacturing, critical
metrics might include manufacturing
defects, because of the costs involved in
producing advanced technology products.
Tomorrow’s Corporate Boardroom: Information, Performance Management and Technology · June 2008

Visualizing a directors’ dashboard Figure 2

When management enlists the board as When relevant information is coupled with the freedom to independently analyze
a strategic advisor—that is, when it data, directors can reduce the disputed territory between themselves and manage-
expands the range of discussion or ment and serve as advisors on a broader array of topics.
review to include business strategy,
competitor behavior, and how strategy Known to Unknown to
is being translated into operational Management Management
changes—it has the effect of reducing
the potential size of disputed territory. 1
The objective of a directors’ dashboard 100 Known to Open Board as
would be to increase the ability of the 50 150 board discussion / advisor
board to obtain access to both external review
and internal information and thus to 2
0 200
make more effective decisions.
(See Figure 2.)
Unknown Disputed Danger
to board territory zone
3

1. Conventional measures of financial 3. Enhanced reporting of emerging

performance augmented by balanced internal issues that the board ought to
scorecard know about and provide counsel on

2. Board commentary and advice aug- 4. Enhanced reporting of emerging

mented to include experiences in strate- external issues that both management
gy and execution that bring greater and the board ought to take into con-
insight to management sideration

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Tomorrow’s Corporate Boardroom: Information, Performance Management and Technology · June 2008

Visualization can take many forms, such Figure 3: Alerts can help boards navigate unforeseen events and crises.
as trend graphs or “heat maps” to indicate
performance over time or to convey
where concentrations of high and low
performance lie on a given dimension
such as customer segments. These tools
give boards the ability to see the business
at a glance based on the key performance
indicators. Important performance
information about products, customers
and markets can be displayed for each
business unit or for the corporation as a
whole. Putting information at directors’
fingertips, in a format that helps them
easily understand its implications, can
prompt beneficial board discussions of
strategy, risk and the best performance
metrics for determining business success.

Alerts at the board level can also be

helpful. Just as stock-trading alerts are
standard features that let investors
know when stock prices dip below or
rise above a certain threshold, alerts
are increasingly being used to highlight
exceptional situations. Such alerts allow
management to quickly discern root
causes and to devise a plan for action.
Conceivably, management and boards
could agree on alerts to notify them-
selves of a critical dip in performance
and help them navigate unforeseen
events and crises. Alerts, in effect, could
help directors stay informed of poten-
tially material events between board
meetings. (See figures 3 and 4 for a
screenshot of alerts and visualizations.)
The information revolution in the
boardroom will not stop there. In our
recent focus group with directors, most
board members expressed a desire to
engage in electronic “what if” analyses
using company data. This ability to
query data would allow a board to
experiment with underlying assump-
tions that may otherwise be taken for
granted, and also to understand the
tradeoffs that may inherently exist
when success on one performance
metric means that another metric
cannot be met. It would be interesting
to know, for example, if the recent
banking crisis could have been mitigated
had boards run “what if” analyses
with credit-crunch scenarios.
Another development on the near
horizon will be the growing ease
with which directors will be able to
instantaneously access outside infor-
mation and incorporate it into their
assessments and decision making.
Company disclosures in new digital
formats, for example, may increasingly
allow directors to retrieve and compare
their competitors’ financial disclosures
without the need for extensive manip-
ulation. These electronic disclosures
might ultimately incorporate industry-
relevant performance metrics, meaning
that other perspectives on the busi-
ness—for example, those that focus on
customers, talent or operations—could
be considered and compared in addition
to financial performance. The ability to
bring independent information to bear
on boardroom decision making will
further increase the value and utility of
boards as effective overseers, and at the
same time bolster their ability to add
value in discussions of external factors
such as competitor strategies.
Far from thick board books and rigid
PowerPoint presentations, technology
solutions such as these can present
relevant information to directors in a
format that stimulates conversations
that go beyond simple compliance.
Technology can allow boards to more
effectively participate in discussions of
relevant performance metrics, company
strategy and enterprise risks.

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Tomorrow’s Corporate Boardroom: Information, Performance Management and Technology · June 2008

Figure 4: Visualizations and “what if” scenarios can prompt beneficial board discussions of strategy, risk and which
performance metrics should be analyzed to determine the business’s success.

Consider this hypothetical example. A North American
consumer-goods company is considering expansion into Asia.
To help advise executives on planning choices, directors could
use a dashboard that included visualization and “what if”
scenarios. As part of the evaluation process, they could test
the country-based expansion options on a variety of measures
to obtain predicted returns on invested capital according to
different assumptions.
To do so they would do the following:
1. Select the targeted geographic area—Asia, in this case.
2. Select a country, such as China.
3. Assess the critical market factors. For China, these would
indicate that the country has a high risk profile for market
entry because of the business, legal and regulatory risk
environment, but also attractive factors such as a high
rate of GDP growth, large population and many markets
for the company’s goods and services.

4. Manipulate different assumptions to find an optimal

return on invested capital.

Market Factors “What If” Forecasted Return on Invested Capital with China Investment
Invested ROIC %
Target Market China Capital 1,634,304,000 40%

Overall Entry Risk High 30%

Revenue 879,715,200

GDP Growth % 12.00% 20%

Gross Margin 31.1%
Population 1,330,000,000 10%
SG&A 16.4%
Addressable Markets 5,320 0%
1 2 3 4 5
Years
Tax Rate 40.00% Market Share 37.8%

10 | Accenture Institute for High Performance Business | Copyright © 2008 Accenture. All rights reserved.
Tomorrow’s Corporate Boardroom: Information, Performance Management and Technology · June 2008
Conclusion
Today’s corporate board has responded
to pressure from legislators, regulators,
investors and listed exchanges to enshrine
independence as a major principle
of effective governance. Tomorrow’s
corporate board, by contrast, will be
expected not only to be independent in
terms of its composition, but also to act
independently. Information asymmetry
between management and the board is
one of the major stumbling blocks along
this path: so long as directors rely on
management for data and analysis, they
About the authors
Robert J. Thomas is the executive
director of the Accenture Institute for
High Performance Business in Boston.
Michael Schrage is a research fellow at
the Center for Digital Business at MIT’s
Sloan School of Management.
Joshua B. Bellin is a senior research
associate with the Accenture Institute
for High Performance Business in
Boston.
George Marcotte is a senior manager
with the Accenture Finance and
Performance Management service line
in Boston.
11 | Accenture Institute for High Performance Business | Copyright © 2008 Accenture. All rights reserved.
can neither make decisions indepen-
dently nor effectively monitor company
performance. For this reason, we believe
that the definition of “independence”
for boards will increasingly come to
include the availability and use of inde-
pendent information and analyses.
Addressing information asymmetry and
enhancing performance management
at the board level go hand in hand.
Tomorrow’s corporate boards should more
actively add value to the companies
they oversee. Not only might directors
engage management in conversations
about the most useful performance
metrics to track, but they could also
use those metrics to interact with
management on broader issues of
Notes
1 Richard Hardin and Judith A. Roland, “Board
Work Processes” in David Nadler, Beverly Behan,
and Mark Nadler, eds., Building Better Boards:
A Blueprint for Effective Governance (San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006), p.86.
2 See Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, “Agency Theory: An
Assessment and Review,” Academy of
Management Reveiw 14 no. 1 (1989). See also
Rakesh Khurana, From Higher Aims to Hired
Hands: The Social Transformation of
American Business Schools and the
Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a
Profession (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2007), pp. 317-26.
3 Peter Hahn, “Blame the Bank Boards,” The Wall
Street Journal, 11/28/07
4 ”What Directors Think,” Corporate Board Member,
2006 Special Supplement p.5.
5 See Paul MacAvoy and Ira Millstein, The
Recurrent Crisis in Corporate Governance
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p.5.
6 For example, Extensible Business Reporting
Language (XBRL) promises to automate the “pro-
cessing of business information by computer
strategy and risk. Far from being back-
seat managers, however, directors
could be strategic advisors, capable of
anticipating management’s blind spots
and offering advice based on their
personal experiences in strategy and
execution. Technology tools that
support the information needs of
directors will play a prominent role
in decision making, both inside and
outside of the boardroom.
software, cutting out laborious and costly
processes of manual re-entry and comparison.”
See http://www.xbrl.org .
7 2004 USC/Mercer Delta Corporate Board
Survey Results », March 2005, Online :
http://www.oliverwyman.com/ow/pdf_files/un_
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