Editing Board of directors (section)

===Criticism===
According to John Gillespie, a former investment banker and co-author of a book critical of boards,<ref>''Money for Nothing: How the Failure of Corporate Boards is Ruining American Business and Costing Us Trillions''</ref> "Far too much of their time has been for check-the-box and cover-your-behind activities rather than real monitoring of executives and providing strategic advice on behalf of shareholders".<ref name=comp/> At the same time, scholars have found that individual directors have a large effect on major corporate initiatives such as mergers and acquisitions<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Rousseau|first1=Peter|last2=Stroup|first2=Caleb|title=Director Histories and the Pattern of Acquisitions|journal=Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis|date=2015|volume=50|issue=4|pages=671–698|doi=10.1017/s0022109015000289|hdl=1803/15915|url=http://www.accessecon.com/pubs/VUECON/vu11-w24.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.accessecon.com/pubs/VUECON/vu11-w24.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live}}</ref> and cross-border investments.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Stroup|first=Caleb|title=International Deal Experience and Cross-Border Acquisitions|journal=Economic Inquiry|volume=55|pages=73–97|date=28 November 2015|ssrn=2037512|doi=10.1111/ecin.12365|s2cid=199305877}}</ref>

According to the International Institute of Management, the rise in investor dissatisfaction, class-action lawsuits and shareholder activism has resulted in more attention directed toward the board of directors and the lack of corporate governance accountability. Shareholders' complaints include issues such as excessive executive compensation and passive participation (lack of proper governance) of the board members. The journal paper cites examples of underperforming CEOs of Fortune 500 companies who took compensation and retirement package in hundreds of millions of dollars while the stock price of their companies lost billions of dollars. The research proposes institutionalizing a standardized board evaluation framework to help balance between the executive compensation and protecting the interest of shareholders<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.iim.education/executive-journal/how-to-evaluate-the-board-of-directors.htm|title=Corporate Governance: How To Evaluate The Board of Directors|publisher=Executive Education Journal - International Institute of Management}}</ref>

The issue of [[gender representation on corporate boards of directors]] has been the subject of much criticism in recent years. Governments and corporations have responded with measures such as legislation mandating gender quotas and [[comply or explain]] systems to address the disproportionality of gender representation on corporate boards.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Senden|first1=Linda|title=The Multiplicity of Regulatory Responses to Remedy the Gender Imbalance on Company Boards|journal=Utrecht Law Review|date=December 2014|volume=10|issue=5|pages=51–66|doi=10.18352/ulr.300|doi-access=free}}</ref> A study of the French corporate elite has found that certain social classes are also disproportionately represented on boards, with those from the upper and, especially, upper-middle classes tending to dominate.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Maclean|first1=Mairi|last2=Harvey|first2=Charles|last3=Kling|first3=Gerhard|date=2014-06-01|title=Pathways to Power: Class, Hyper-Agency and the French Corporate Elite|journal=Organization Studies|language=en|volume=35|issue=6|pages=825–855|doi=10.1177/0170840613509919|s2cid=145716192|issn=0170-8406|url=http://opus.bath.ac.uk/50376/3/Maclean_Harvey_Kling_OS_2014.pdf|archive-url=https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20181119045202/https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/publications/pathways-to-power-class-hyper-agency-and-the-french-corporate-eli|url-status=dead|archive-date=2018-11-19}}</ref>