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Participation in three types of development activities is examined among salaried employees of a firm that significantly increased access to development after a series of layoffs in the late 1990s. Analyses of survey and archival data representing 667 employees show that on‐the‐job training was positively related to organisational commitment and negatively related to intention to turnover. Participation in tuition‐reimbursement, which provides more general or marketable skills, was positively related to intention to turnover. However, intention to turnover was reduced after earning a degree through tuition‐reimbursement if employees were subsequently promoted. Implications for an employment relationship based on ‘employability’ are discussed.

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Researchers have recently begun to integrate the literatures on corporate boards and team effectiveness in an effort to better understand how boards function and impact company performance. This study identifies five attributes of high-performing teams - knowledge, information, power, incentives and opportunity/time - and argues that these attributes will promote board effectiveness, which in turn influence corporate financial performance. These relationships are investigated using combined survey and archival sources of data for 210 "Fortune 1000" companies. Findings indicate that most team effectiveness attributes are associated with higher levels of board effectiveness as rated by the board directors, and that board effectiveness is significantly related to corporate financial performance. Copyright (c) Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2009.

Recent US corporate governance reforms introduced extensive regulations and guidelines for public corporations, particularly corporate boards. This article evaluates the extent to which empirical research on corporate boards and firm performance supports these reforms. Building on the meta-analysis conducted by Zahra and Pearce (1989 ), we review 105 studies published between 1989 and 2005. We find most of the practices mandated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, and the regulations issued by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the NASDAQ, had not been subject to prior study. Where board characteristics have been studied, we find limited guidance for policymakers on identifying governance practices that result in more effective firm performance. In an effort to increase the relevance of future research on boards and firm performance, we provide a framework on corporate boards. Copyright (c) 2007 The Authors; Journal compilation (c) 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.