"The Board’s Role in Overseeing Culture" from the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN) addresses the critical importance, albeit amorphous nature, of the corporate culture. The paper includes a list of questions for investors to ask boards to assist them in understanding their portfolio companies' corporate culture and the quality of the board's oversight, which may also be used to inform boards' oversight and engagement preparedness. The investor questions inherently suggest practices boards and management may wish to consider to better address various aspects of corporate conduct that bear on culture including leadership modeling and accountability, strategy-culture alignment, employee turnover and misconduct, employee complaint mechanisms and process, and sources of board information about the culture including non-management-filtered sources and management's reporting of relevant metrics to the board.
See last week's reports: "Corporate Culture Matters (Even in the Major Leagues)" and "Corporate Culture Toolkit"; the CAQ's webcast: "A New Focus on Corporate Culture: How to Assess Culture and Why" (slides here); and additional information & resources on our Corporate Culture page. This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!