The concept of board capital in corporate governance research: a structured literature review

The purpose of this paper is to review and critically evaluate the extant academic research employing the concept of board capital, which was introduced by Hillman and Dalziel (2003) in order to explain the antecedents of effective board functioning and the resulting impact on firm performance. The emergence of a growing body of empirical literature based on the concept of board capital and the goal of identifying the main research topics and empirical strategies triggered the structured review presented in this paper. This study analyses 64 empirical articles encompassing the concept of board capital using a structured literature review methodology. We narrowed the search to articles published from 2003 to July 2019 and listed in the Scopus database. The selected articles mainly focused on the impact of board capital on firm performance and corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure. Other relevant but less numerous works focused on the impact of board capital on firm innovation and firm internationalization. This research also highlights the need for qualitative studies examining the actual process of board monitoring and advising on strategic issues. Additionally, findings revealed a scarcity of empirical studies addressing certain national contexts, including Italy. This study is limited with respect to the analysed time period (2003-July 2019) and to the methodological approach employed to review the selected articles. We found no evidence in published academic journals of any previous literature review on board capital research.