Board of directors' configurations and the performance of banks. Lessons learned from the global financial crisis

Our paper analyses the characteristics of the boards of directors of the best performing listed Italian banks during the last global financial crisis (from 2008 to 2015). Through a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), the study identifies three different board configurations (archetypes) that these banks adopted: a committee-based board, a gender diversity-based board, and a large size-based board. Although different in some of their characteristics, these configurations share the rationale of favouring the advisory services that the board can provide to managers in their decision-making activities. These services, in turn, are particularly valuable in a time of high risk and uncertainty for banks. With its results, the paper contributes to the literature on the relationship between board characteristics and organisational performance and to a better understanding of the configurations that can best serve when firms’ decision making, for various reasons, becomes particularly complex and can benefit from board support. Our results also contribute to further detail the governance characteristics of banks in the Italian context.