Events

Prof. Oleg Petrenko
Associate Professor
Michael F. Price College of Business
University of Oklahoma

Although board of directors are designed to ensure effective oversight, similar designs often yield sharply different outcomes. This study examines how the motivational dimensions of board chairs shape the chair–CEO relationship and, through it, whether the board’s governance emphasizes control or collaboration. Drawing on a dataset comprising 980 firm-year observations across 153 publicly listed firms between 2000 and 2023, we integrate videometric assessments of chair personality with measures of board orientation towards control or collaboration. The results show that narcissistic rivalry drives a control-oriented approach characterized by defensive monitoring and procedural dominance, whereas admiration counterbalances these tendencies by promoting openness and constructive oversight. These effects are moderated by contextual boundaries: rivalry’s control bias is weakened when the top management team holds greater relative power, when boards include more independent directors. By linking the inner motives of board chairs to the behavioral tone of governance, the study advances a behavioral perspective on corporate oversight that reveals the psychological and relational microfoundations of board functioning and explains why structurally similar boards enact governance so differently in practice depending on who the chair is and how they engage the CEO.