This is just 'business as usual' in this corrupt area of business regulation. Corporations pick these old darlings for a reason.
The title of the article makes it sound like there is some overarching strategic purpose for having members of foreign disciplines on corporate boards.
Were that actually the case, ala multidisciplinary input of a substantial kind
(were that possible in the status quo system of corporate structures),
or thinking outside the 'Maverick Executive' Box, that might be a good thing. Unfortunately, it has been merely a clever pretext.
The actual reasons are that these old darlings know often very little about the businesses that are actually run by the executives. The other actual reasons sometimes have to do with intercorporate or political back scratching, good ole boy/girl stuff, not 'good corporate governance', an oxymoron (the last thing they would want.)
Getting people like these is an executive decision, in order to have as little interference as possible with corporate executive shenanigans.
It is rather like selecting a mediator for a contested legal case who is unfamiliar with the subject matter field of the law, but who is nevertheless certified as a mediator of that kind of case by some supreme court or board;
selected (by the knowledgeable nonsettling side) for the express purpose of failing to settle the case, so that the fees can continue to accrue unabated, even though mediation was 'ordered' or 'tried'...
the old darling stumbles around the mediation discussions, spending a lot of time just getting up to speed on basic matters, not even the perhaps technical issues on which the dispute turns, and about that time, an impasse can conveniently be declared.
Executives' rationales for selecting academicians for such boards is rather like litigators selecting such mediators for contested cases. similar 'underlying principles' apply. TERM SEARCH: TEAM PLAY, experts, Rumpole, ETC.
Another, analogous, phenomenon is that of selecting a new CEO for a corporation who has no background in the core business or businesses of the company.
There can be many reasons for selecting such a person to head an organization; none of them really very good. That is history of American business organizational acumen and its competitive environment.
THIS IS THOORA BAIT.
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