DLA Piper launch two-year global Future of Boards study

The Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) and DLA Piper announced the launch of a two-year, global research collaboration to study the Future of Boards.

The Future of Boards study aims to understand the shifts in governance and leadership which enable organisations to align business success with sustainability. This will combine existing academic and practitioner research with insights from board directors and key stakeholders across a range of jurisdictions. The aim is to produce practical, evidence-based, internationally relevant recommendations to prepare businesses and their leadership for the future.

Boards across the world are facing growing pressure and scrutiny by investors as the businesses they lead face new disclosure requirements and performance expectations about how they serve society and manage climate and nature-related risks and opportunities. These changes, alongside evolving debates about the purpose of business and stakeholder capitalism, appear to create an opportunity for a reappraisal of the role, structure, composition and behaviour of boards. However, the speed and nature of these changes, and how they might unfold is little understood. This leaves boards in a difficult position regarding how to prepare for the emerging future. This study aims to address this challenge.

This study “is very appropriate at this time given the changing environment in which the corporate world and organisations operate. There is a need for an enlightened debate on the individual, organisational and systemic barriers to progress and a set of practical recommendations to tackle them”, said Santiago Hierro, of counsel at DLA Piper Spain.