Setting the company strategy -- Hiring (and firing) the CEO--and the Board -- A culture revolution enters the boardroom -- Five critical issues no board should ignore -- Innovate or die: the existential crisis of the twenty-first century board

"Corporate boards have never been under greater pressure. Scandals and malpractice at companies like Theranos, WeWork, Uber, and Wells Fargo have raised serious, justified questions about the quality of corporate governance among regulators, shareholders, and society at large. Activists are pressing corporations and their boards to assume new responsibilities on issues from pay equity to climate change. A global pandemic and a profound economic crisis have only accelerated a mounting backlash against globalization and capitalism itself. In How Boards Work: And How They Can Work Better in a Chaotic World, prize-winning economist and veteran corporate director Dambisa Moyo offers an insider's view of corporate boards' struggles to meet the challenges of our perilous times. Boards, she argues, must take bold steps to reform their practices and exert far stronger leadership if global corporations hope to survive the perilous years ahead. Many people--including even many shareholders and executives--understand little about what boards do, how they work, and the fiduciary responsibilities they must fulfill. Drawing on Moyo's decade of experience serving on corporate boards, How Boards Work takes readers inside corporate board rooms as boards face ever-louder demands to broaden their traditional mandate--choosing the CEO and endorsing corporate strategy--by weighing in on questions of racial and gender equity, data privacy, and other cultural and social issues. It describes how the challenges facing boards will only grow in the coming decade as globalization ebbs, short-term thinking dominates investor behavior, and competition for talent becomes more intense. Corporations must fundamentally rethink how they do business, Moyo argues, and boards must equip themselves to lead the way through a radical program of modernization. Corporations need boards that are more transparent, more knowledgeable, more diverse, and much more deeply involved in setting the strategic course of the companies they lead. The survival and success of global corporations is crucial to the global economy. How Boards Work offers a road map for how boards can steer companies through tomorrow's challenges and ensure they can thrive to the benefit not only of their employees and shareholders but also that of society at large"--