June 26, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
NEW BOOKS
The Board Book: An Insider’s Guide for Directors and Trustees
by William G. Bowen
William G. Bowen, a former president of Princeton University and a board member at several for-profit and nonprofit organizations, has written a guide to the roles, responsibilities, and dynamics of boards.
“Where power resides, how it is distributed and exercised, and how it is limited and controlled often remain obscure,” he writes. His book, which gathers contributions from a number of other business and nonprofit leaders, aims to shed some light on the inner workings of charity and corporate boards, “because all of us have a stake in the effective functioning of organizations that affect our lives and our society in so many ways.”
Boards of directors and trustees, Mr. Bowen writes, must not only “help organizations avoid serious missteps; they also need to be proactive partners in working with the CEO/president to achieve highly positive outcomes.”
The author, who has been a director at both grant makers and grant seekers, argues that charity and corporate boards can learn much from one another. Accordingly, he compares and contrasts the practices of each sector’s boards to draw out advice.
Mr. Bowen discusses the general roles and purposes of boards; the constraints on their activity; board leadership and recruitment; and issues of executive compensation, evaluation, firings, and transitions. He also focuses on board operations and structure, including committees, pay for trustees, evaluation of members’ performance, term limits, and dysfunctional boards.
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company, 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110; (212) 354-5500; fax (212) 869-0856; http://www.wwnorton.com; 230 pages; $26.95; ISBN 978-0-393-06645-6.
