A posting by Alex Tabarrok today on Marginal Revolution inspired some “what’s good for the goose…” thinking for me today. He links to a study showing that academics on corporate boards tend to keep the company healthy.

I am not going to suggest putting arts and culture people on corporate boards will automatically help a corporation any more than encouraging them to settle in a city will make the area more economically prosperous. However, many of the impacts the study finds academics (both professors and administrators) have on companies appear to be ones that arts professionals might bring as well.

First, academic directors are outside directors with relatively strong reputations and a tradition of independent thinking. They are trained to be critical thinkers with their own opinions and judgments, and they are less influenced by others and can be tough when necessary (Jiang and Murphy, 2007)…Fama (1980) and Fama and Jensen (1983) argue that outside directors have incentives to monitor management because they want to protect their reputation as effective, independent decision makers. Thus, the monitoring theory indicates that academic directors would be important monitors of management.

Obviously, not all professors would make good directors, nor would all arts people. However, arts people have that tradition of independent thinking and an almost inborn fear of being labeled a sell-out which can motivate them to speak their concerns.

Third, academic directors’ primary areas of expertise are academic in nature. They tend to think through problems differently than nonacademics and can provide different perspectives in the boardroom, which adds to the board’s diversity. Prior studies find that board diversity (such as occupational diversity, social diversity, gender diversity, and ethnic diversity) is an important factor that influences board efficacy and firm performance

If arts people don’t bring a different perspective to things, I don’t know who will.

The area the study found that academics contributed most to a company was in relation to oversight. As I read the following, it seemed that non-profit board meetings and the attendant committee meetings, something that is at the center of both a professor and an arts administrator’s life, might actually be an asset.

“We find that academic directors are more likely to attend board meetings than other outside directors. In addition, academic directors hold more outstanding committee memberships than other outside directors. Specifically, academic directors are more likely to sit on monitoring-related committees, such as auditing committees and corporate governance committees, than nonacademic outside directors. The results on the director attendance behavior and committee assignments indicate that academic directors are better at board governance than other outside directors.”

Other benefits to oversight the study found was that CEO turnover was more closely tied with company performance and the financial operations were run in such a way there were fewer Securities and Exchange Commission investigations of the top executives when academics sat on the board. Companies with academics on the board also tended to be more innovative.

Now, of course, the disclaimers. Not all types of companies had academics on the boards and the study finds that different types of companies benefited from different board compositions.

Business professors were the most effective board members. Other types of academic fields mentioned were technology and law. This is not to say that arts people wouldn’t be effective because it doesn’t appear that too many liberal arts professors were asked to serve. It is something of an unknown quality.

If corporations are valuing creativity and critical thinking from employees, especially recent college graduates, they could presumably benefit from tapping those who teach them.

Likewise, they could benefit from arts people who are not only creative, critical thinkers, but are constantly cobbling together coalitions to pursue projects.

But the potentially biggest impediment to effective service on a for-profit board for both academics and arts people is whether they are dependent on the corporation upon whose board they serve for support.

“Furthermore, some academic directors hold administrative positions and thus may have connections to companies through university endowments or other fundraising relationships, which may make them less independent than inside managers.”

Still, it is interesting to think about the potential benefits to a corporation to have an arts person serve on the board.

In wondering why it doesn’t happen more often, I came to the not inconsiderable or illogical conclusion that corporations may not view those who ask them for money as equal to the task of helping them make money.