Leader character in board governance.

Despite the critical leadership role that corporate boards play in organizations, the character of their members has been neglected in research studies. We used a multi-method data collection approach to explore whether current directors in the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors believe that leader character plays an important role in board governance, particularly with regards to how boards make decisions, recruit new members, lead their organizations, and work together to perform their fiduciary and other responsibilities. Despite the perceived importance of leader character as reported by highly experienced corporate directors, we found that leader character is not commonly attended to in board conversations as a means to purposively improve the way boards operate. We outline practical implications of our findings as well as offer a call to action for future research on character in the context of board governance with the intent to improve governance in the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors and hence to foster sustained excellence in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]