Conference Review

Bernard Taylor*

T he International Conference on Corpor-ate Governance and Direction is an

annual forum for the presentation and dis-cussion of best practice and new research. Theconference offers an international platformfor leading thinkers, practitioners and re-searchers and provides a meeting point forpeople from different industries and pro-fessions – directors, investors, policy-makers,board advisers and academics.

Aims and scope

The aim is to provide ‘‘an internationalmarket place in ideas’’ where papers aboutnew thinking, new research and new prac-tices can be presented, discussed and laterpublished. To date, 150 papers have beenpresented and around a half of them havebeen published in international journals.

In 2001 the conference produced a recordnumber of 47 papers: 13 plenary presenta-tions and 34 presented in Special InterestGroups.

The theme

In 2001, the theme was: ‘‘Driving the BusinessForward: Creating Value through EntrepreneurialLeadership’’.

We believe that the current debate on Cor-porate Governance concentrates on controland ways of restraining executive decisions.Board members should focus more on theother central task of the board, which is‘‘Corporate Entrepreneurship’’ – developingstrategies for growth and corporate renewal,encouraging the development of new activ-ities and the elimination of old ones.

The purpose of the conference was toexplain, with company cases, this concept ofcorporate entrepreneurship and how it is put

into operation. Corporate boards have twomain roles: to deal with control and account-ability, and to provide leadership in strategyand performance (see Figure 1). Using asimple matrix we can classify board leader-ship styles into four main types:

(i) Business as Usual: mainly concernedwith day to day operations.

(ii) Individual Entrepreneurship: leadershipby an entrepreneur.

(iii) Corporate Governance: focused mainlyon financial control and external report-ing.

(iv) Corporate Entrepreneurship: a stylewhich combines financial control withentrepreneurship both in the main boardand in subsidiary boards.

To succeed in an unpredictable world, com-panies, large and small, must be agile and

* Address for correspondence:Bernard Taylor, Henley Man-agement College, Greenlands,Henley on Thames, RG9 3AU.

Figure 1: Board leadership styles

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able to respond quickly to fast-changingmarkets through:

. communicating the corporate vision andvalues

. setting stretch goals and benchmarkingagainst the best competitors

. developing a sense of ownership and trust

. building decentralised structures

. changing managers into leaders, and

. involving the workforce.

The conference presented a new agenda forCorporate Governance & Direction – to guidepublic policy and to improve corporatedecision-making. The main sessions dealtwith:

. Creating Value through Corporate Govern-ance and Entrepreneurial Board Leader-ship.

. The Entrepreneurial Mindset: A Blueprintfor Building Entrepreneurial Organis-ations.

. Maximising Shareholder Value: The Risksto Employees, Customers and the Com-munity.

. An Entrepreneurial Model for CorporateGovernance: Devolving Powers to Sub-sidiary Boards.

. Value-based Management: Creating Valuefor Stakeholders.

. Implementing a New Strategy at PhilipsInternational.

. Employee Shareholding: Raising Moraleand Performance.

. Planning for Executive Succession: TheState of the Art.

. The Benefits of Active Ownership.

. Pay and Incentives for Directors of Sub-sidiary Boards.

. Living Culture: A Value-driven Approachto Revitalising Your Company Culture.

Eminent speakers

The speakers included leading practitionersand experts from around the world:

Robert Monks, Chairman, LENS InvestmentManagement, Washington, author of The NewGlobal Investors, Capstone, Oxford, 2001.Sir John Banham, Chairman, Kingfisher plc,London.Professor Ian MacMillan, Wharton School,University of Pennsylvania, co-author of TheEntrepreneurial Mindset, Harvard, 2000.Denis Cassidy, Director, Compass Group plc,London.Professor Hans Strikwerda, Senior Con-sultant, Nolan Norton Institute, Visiting Pro-fessor the University of Amsterdam.

Philippe Haspeslagh, Professor of CorporateStrategy, INSEAD, Fontainebleau.Jelto Smits, Vice President of Philips Re-design, Philips International, Amsterdam.Philippe Subiron, Corporate Human Re-sources, Aventis SA, Strasbourg.Florian Schilling, Partner, Heidrick &Struggles, Frankfurt.Rolf Carlsson, Senior Research Fellow, Scan-dinavian Institute for Administrative Re-search, Stockholm, author of Ownership andValue Creation, Wiley, 2001.Peter Brown, Chairman, Top Pay ResearchGroup, London.Jan Thornbury, Management Consultant,author of Living Culture, Random House,2000.

The participants

The conference, in 2001, attracted over 60participants from 14 countries around theworld including: Australia, Bahrain, Belgium,Bulgaria, France, Germany, The Netherlands,New Zealand, Poland, Sweden, the USA andthe UK. Ninety per cent of the participantsrated the conference Excellent or Very Goodfor ‘‘Enjoyment’’ and 85 per cent for ‘‘OverallSatisfaction’’. The participants felt the mainbenefits were:

. meeting leading thinkers, practitioners andresearchers from around the world

. the opportunity to benchmark their ownorganisations against global best practice,and

. the chance to review their ideas, gain newinsights and make new contacts.

The next conference

The Fifth International Conference is sched-uled for 8–10 October 2002 and the themeproposed is: ‘‘After Enron: How Can We MakeCorporate Governance Work’’.

To obtain a copy of the programme or tooffer papers, please contact Mrs Jill Foulds,Administrator, Centre for Board Effective-ness, Henley Management College, Green-lands, Henley on Thames, RG9 3AU.Telephone 00 44 (0)1491 418807, fax 00 44 (0)1491 571574, email Jill.Foulds@henleymc.ac.uk

Professor Bernard Taylor is Executive Direc-tor of the Centre for Board Effectiveness atHenley Management College, Henley onThames. He has founded two internationaljournals, Long Range Planning and The Journalof General Management, produced 22 books

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and established two European Councils – theEuropean Councils on Corporate Strategy andBoard Effectiveness for The Conference BoardEurope. Before becoming an academic, hewas in Marketing with Procter & Gamble andin Education and Training with Rank Xerox.He is a consultant on strategy to companiesand public organisations in Britain and over-seas. His latest book is Boards at Work: How

Directors View their Roles and Responsibilitieswith Philip Stiles, Oxford University Press,2001. Other books include Driving Change inFinancial Services with Ian Morison (Wood-head, 1999), Managing Technology for Competi-tive Advantage with Joe Anderson and RobinFears (Financial Times, 1997) and SupergrowthCompanies: Entrepreneurs in Action with JohnHarrison (Butterworth Heinemann, 1996).

‘‘Investors will always focus on the share price, or on the only slightly broader concept ofshareholder value. Successful company managers are mindful of their responsibilities toshareholders but they have a wider agenda. Profit – and share price performance – is theoutcome of their strategic purpose, not its sole aim. So though shareholders should be themost powerful influence on matters that directly affect the governance of the company –such as board structure or the way management incentives are set – the case for theirinvolvement in strategy is much less clear-cut.’’ Peter Martin, Financial Times, 22 January2002.

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