Dr Stuart Farquhar

Stuart Farquhar, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in Finance at the University of Wolverhampton Business School, where his main teaching areas include finance, economics, and corporate governance. He is an editorial board member of the International Journal of Business Governance & Ethics.

His research interests are in board processes, behaviours and board effectiveness in the private, charitable and public sectors, and corporate governance in the sports industry.

An examination of board effectiveness in the charitable sector of the UK

This ERAS project examined the relationship between board processes, board task involvement and board effectiveness in the UK not-for-profit sector. Drawing on survey responses from board chairs and board trustees the study found that board service task and board strategy task were the key explanatory variables of board effectiveness, whereas the board control task was not a significant explanation of board effectiveness. In addition, the results show that a number of board processes are important for board tasks. In particular, trust is an important variable in explaining board service task involvement, communication quality is an important determinant of board strategy task involvement and cognitive conflict is a significant determinant of board control task involvement. These findings are important because it identifies differences in the factors leading to board effectiveness between charitable boards and for-profit boards.