. His research is centered on issues of higher education governance, student activism and involvement, and the history of higher education. E-mail: jonlozan@indiana.eduAmanda Rutherford is assistant professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her research focuses on performance accountability systems, executive profiles and decision-making processes, and representative bureaucracy. Evidence for Practice• Executive turnover in public and nonprofit organizations may be partially explained by governing board structures and politics.• In U.S. higher education, larger governing boards increase the likelihood of executive departure, while boards overseeing multiple institutions lower the likelihood of departure.• The presence of either a faculty representative or student representative on the governing board vastly decreases the likelihood of executive departure.• Governing board characteristics explain little regarding where executives go after leaving their position. Amanda Rutherford Jon LozanoIndiana University, Bloomington Top Management Turnover: The Role of Governing Board Structures U nderstanding why executives leave their posts is becoming increasingly important for modern public organizations, where evolving accountability policies and increasing political polarization place heavy responsibilities on top-level managers. Executive departures often differ from turnover in lower-level positions given the salience of and political pressure on executives (for recent work on employee turnover, see, e.g., Grissom, Viano, and Selin 2016 ). Public administration scholars have occasionally examined what underlying factors increase executive turnover risk, with a focus on push and pull factors that either force a manager to leave or attract him or her to a different position. While this work recognizes the potential influence of politics on managerial tenure-particularly in the case of city managers-it stops short of fully considering the role of governing board structures in departure decisions. Given increased polarization and far-reaching accountability policies, understanding the durability of executive roles is quite pressing for the public sector.Research on corporate governance and private firms provides a wealth of literature on linkages between board governance and executive turnover, executive compensation, and various forms of firm performance (see, e.g., Daily, Dalton, and Canella 2003 ;Gillan 2006 ). While some of these linkages can be detected in research on board composition and power by nonprofit scholars (e.g., O ' Regan and Oster 2005 ), discussions of how board structures and politics can influence executive tenure have less commonly been extended to public and nonprofit organizations. Yet governing boards of public organizations vary dramatically in size, oversight responsibilities, member composition, and member selection. Given that members of governing boards often interact directly with agency executives in strategic planning and decision-mak...

An online survey administered to student trustees serving on governing boards drew 76 responses from 29 states and the District of Columbia. The results revealed that the students' views and positions were most influenced by other student leaders and least influenced by other board members, without significant difference by the respondents' race or gender. They also reported more influence from student leaders than from administrators. The students who were appointed by the state governor were much less likely to report feeling pressure from other students than were the students selected in other ways. Institutional type did not influence the students' perceived sources of pressure. (52 ref)-Educational Leadership and Policy Studies,

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