Bigger Boards Better? - school board size found to affect school district performance - Brief Article

School Administrator, May, 2001

A governing board with a larger membership often means better performance ... when it comes to the organization's bottom line.

That's the conclusion drawn by two professors at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. They reviewed 27 studies on the size of governing boards, covering 20,620 firms. Boards ranged in size from six to 22 directors.

The benefit of a big board, the researchers said in their own recent study, may be its greater ability to obtain critical resources. Still, they don't recommend 30-member boards, but suggest there are good reasons to opt for nine instead of six board members.