Is there an Expectations Gap in the Roles of Independent Directors? An Explorative Study of Listed Chinese Companies
通过访谈中国上市公司高管、独立董事、机构投资者和交易所监管者，发现独立董事在监督和战略角色上存在绩效差距，但无合理性差距；而资源提供角色则因被视为“关系”行为而缺乏共识。
This paper investigates whether an expectations gap exists in the control, strategic and resource provision roles that independent directors play in the corporate governance of listed Chinese firms and the factors that affect their performance of these roles. For this purpose, we interviewed Chinese executive directors, independent directors, institutional investors and stock exchange regulators. We find a performance gap but no reasonableness gap with respect to the control and strategic roles. The results suggest that the performance gap may be attributed to such factors as the ill‐defined roles, independent directors' limited amount of time commitment and their lack of competence and objectivity. Interestingly, there is disagreement over the protection of minority interest as the objective of the control role. We find no consensus on the desirability, reasonableness and effectiveness of independent directors' resource provision role, perhaps because of a pejorative interpretation of this role as an exercise of guanxi .