Behind Closed Doors: How Boardroom Silence and Implicit Theories Shape Corporate Governance
Another paper I have been working on for the past years has been published in Corporate Governance: An International Review. Thank you to the editor and reviewers for helping me improve this paper. Your feedback has been tremendously helpful.
The question at the heart of the study is deceptively simple:
Why do people not say what they really think and feel during board meetings?
What intrigued me was the paradox. Board members are among the most powerful actors in organizations. So why would they remain silent?
Rather than starting with a predefined hypothesis, I approached this question abductively. Methodologically, I borrowed principles from Action Design Research to stay close to practice while developing theory from what emerged in the field.
The answer turned out to be far more complex than I initially expected.
Perceived risk is certainly part of the explanation.
Yet what I found was that silence is not always experienced or understood in the same way. Some board members are more conscious than others of the dynamics influencing what they do or do not say.
In addition, many of these dynamics have become so taken for granted that they are rarely questioned.
The other mechanisms I identified are, once you see them, quite logical, yet they are often overlooked.
For me, this study shows that silence in the boardroom is not simply the absence of voice, nor the absence of courage. It is a far more nuanced and complex phenomenon.
I hope you enjoy reading it.
