Governance

Corporate governance is a key research theme for Tomorrow’s Company.

Building on the Tomorrow’s Innovation, Risk and Governance report, our major governance outputs to date include:

• The case for the ‘Board Mandate’ – this publication champions the concept of a ‘mandate’ which sets out the ‘essence’ of the ‘character’ and distinctiveness of the company. We believe that this ‘working charter’ can help boards navigate their way through increasingly choppy waters by facilitating more effective strategic engagement: primarily between executive directors and NEDs to improve board effectiveness, but with the associated benefit that it drives communication externally with the key stakeholders, including investors, government and regulators, and society at large.
• Improving the quality of boardroom conversations – this guide focuses on the importance of conversation as the ‘magic dust’ that underpins board effectiveness and considers the ways in which boards strive to get the very best from the skills and abilities around the board table. It also draws on the experience of members of the GGF and the findings of a survey of FTSE 350 board members, facilitated by Korn/Ferry and KPMG.
• The boardroom and risk – this report and tool-kit, developed in collaboration with Airmic, describes a new group of potentially catastrophic risks highlighted by recent research, what the roads to ruin and roads to resilience look like and what boards can do to evolve their risk management agenda and more effectively govern risk.
• Governing Values – this report, agenda and roadmap developed in collaboration with the City Values Forum is focused on the key role of boards and chairmen, in governing values.
• Tomorrow’s Chairman – this series of letters celebrates and explores what makes for great chairmen, now and in the future. The letters format provides a simple device which captures how someone with many years’ experience might hand over to a less experienced successor. We are serialising the letters in partnership with the Financial Times NED Club and will release them across the late summer and autumn beginning on the 10th of July 2014.
• Tomorrow’s Risk Leadership – the report explores the case for a distinct and more specialist role within non-financial services to support the board in their risk leadership role, recognising there will be differences in how risk is managed and roles are structured across organisations and sectors. A ‘tool-kit’ aimed at helping boards review the effectiveness of their current risk leadership and whether such a role may be needed will be included in the publication.

Good Governance Forum

Our work on governance comes from the Good Governance Forum, which was formed in March 2010 in response to questions raised about the effectiveness of corporate governance as a result of the financial crisis and the subsequent reviews by Sir David Walker and the FRC.

The Forum brought together a number of key companies, organisations, regulators and individuals to explore what good governance means and to make practical recommendations to company boards and policy makers.

Through the Good Governance Forum we supported business success through improving the quality of corporate governance by providing tools, resources and other instruments for chairs, company secretaries and other key people who drive the quality of board performance.

See the full list of our governance publications here.