Board Members Contribution to Strategy
Please respond to the following:Top executives and members of a corporation’s board of directors have different roles and responsibilities. Traditionally, executives have been responsible for determining the firm’s strategic direction and implementing strategies to achieve it, whereas the board of directors has been responsible for monitoring and controlling managerial decisions and actions. Some argue that boards should become more involved with the formulation of a firm’s strategies. How would the board’s increased involvement in the selection of strategies affect a firm’s strategic competitiveness? What evidence you offer to support their position?
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Boards should first identify the company’s priorities and then communicate these priorities to the executives, after which they formulate strategies to actualize these priorities (Reeves, 2018). Boards should also find the requisite resources and allocate them to the executives to implement strategies geared towards realizing the company’s goals. The board’s oversight role extends to the implementation of strategy, where they have to assess the progress made, which might inform the decision whether to allocate more resources to support the implementation of the company’s strategies. Even though the board’s involvement is necessary, there is a downside to their participation in strategy formulation. Critics argue that such a level of involvement is tantamount to the executives’ micro-management, which might ultimately put the two on a collision course (Reeves, 2018). Some executives might feel that increased oversight by boards might interfere with their duties, an aspect that gives rise to disagreements within a company. As such, boards should know when to step in and when to let the executives perform their duties with minimal intervention by them.
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