Is the performance of housing corporations determined by the leadership styles of their corporate directors? Only to a limited extent, according to the Mariëtte Heemskerk’s doctoral dissertation. The relationships that she discovered nevertheless offer opportunities for improving governance.
In her PhD thesis, entitled Bestuurdersgeheimen (Secrets of directors), Heemskerk distinguishes between the internal and external leadership roles that directors can adopt. Her research focuses on the question of whether the roles chosen by corporate directors are associated with the strategic profiles and performance of their corporations. Based on existing literature, she addresses such roles as the ‘Communicating Sense-maker’, the ‘Patient Achiever’, the ‘Bonding Strategist’ and the ‘Charming Seducer’. She uses these roles to draw connections: what performance did a corporation achieve when a director did or did not choose a particular role? Although the study generated a very large database, it did not yield any unambiguous answers. According to Heemskerk’s calculations, there are 800 possible links between leadership roles, strategic profiles and performance. Her results demonstrated ‘only’ 69. It is thus not so easy to unravel all of the secrets of directors. According to Heemskerk: “On the one hand, these findings put the issue into perspective; on the other hand, it would be interesting to examine the links that were revealed in greater detail. These links offer new insights into the types of performance that are actually associated with the roles adopted by directors.” In her doctoral research, Heemskerk also conducted a survey, in which 175 corporate directors participated.
All of the recent discussion about corporations could give the impression that corporations are currently occupied predominantly with the pursuit of financial gain. According to the results of the survey, however, the opposite is true. For the vast majority, social benefits were at the forefront of the strategic profile. “Nevertheless, many people expect that this will change in the future, due to recent measures by the government”, argues Heemskerk. It is interesting to note that the majority of the directors were reasonably satisfied with the performance of their organisations in the period 2007–2011. Their satisfaction, however, was not associated with the performance indicators that were investigated.
Heemskerk considers the findings from her research important for both directors and supervisory boards. With these results, they can better analyse whether leadership roles correspond to the performance desired by a corporation.