How can the board add value?

There are at least three main areas in which boards of directors can add value to their corporate enterprise. Ada Demb and F.-Friedrich Neubauer evaluate two -- monitoring management and helping to formulate corporate strategy -- and find them valuable. But it is the third area where the board has a unique and unequivocal role. It can make itself responsible for identifying and prioritising standards against which the corporation will allow itself to be judged. These standards range widely from financial to environmental and all impinge on the "corporate lifespace". Demb and Neubauer argue that the external vision and judgement brought about by board directors to mediate this lifespace provide the greatest added-value of all.