In both Canada and the U.S., corporate governance has clearly benefited from the recent greater emphasis on shareholder accountability and legal compliance. But the dramatic shift in the board’s role, from “lapdog” to “watchdog,” runs the risk of ignoring a valuable middle ground, where the board becomes a unique and important resource that lends value to the enterprise and its stakeholders.
David Nadler, co-author of Building Better Boards: A Blueprint for Effective Governance, will talk about how each board can work with management to create a new, value-adding role that reaches far beyond compliance with legal requirements — a state he describes as “nothing more than the lowest common denominator of sound corporate governance.” Building Better Boards is about enabling the board to actually perform as a team and significantly improve the quality of their engagement with management.
David A. Nadler, PhD, is chairman of Mercer Delta Consulting, where he was CEO from 1980 to 2005. He consults at the CEO level on large-scale organization change, executive leadership, organization design, senior teams, and board effectiveness. He is known for his research and writing on organizational change and design, feedback, group performance, management, corporate governance, and quality improvement. Dr. Nadler has written and/or edited sixteen books and numerous articles, appearing in publications such as The Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Dr. Nadler is a member of the Academy of Management and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association.
Prior to Mercer Delta, Dr. Nadler was an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University. He holds a BA in International Affairs from George Washington University, an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and an MA and PhD in Psychology from the University of Michigan.
