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The ongoing megatrend of digitalization is significantly affecting societies and organizations. How organizations deal with the impact of digitalization may determine whether or not they will be competitive in the future. The board of directors may hereby play a key role for the organization to adapt to the changing strategic context. But based on various corporate failures, boards' work and their effectiveness have recently been questioned. Are todays' boards equipped to create values for organizations in the future? We address this important research question by introducing a framework where digitalization is predicted to influence boards in two areas. First, we argue that boards in the future consist of virtual networks of people where needs to monitor management diminish and shared leadership approaches are emphasized. Second, we suggest that boards work according to a dynamic board agenda based on organizational threats and opportunities. The agenda is built around learning and knowledge management and is reflected in the committee structure. Using dynamic capabilities arguments, we propose a framework with the ambition to contribute to the understanding of what makes boards fit future organizational needs. With such an approach, this is the first study that contributes to knowledge on boards by examining how boards need to adapt to meet the challenges in a digital world. The implications for theory and practice call for changed perspectives on what boards do and how they look like.

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In small and medium‐sized organizations, boards of directors often spend most of their time providing advice to the management. As the content of advice provided has seldom been the focus of previous studies, we differentiate between functional and firm‐specific advisory tasks. We examine antecedents of the two types to explain why this differentiation is important. Applying group effectiveness arguments, we study the effects board members' different knowledge bases and diversity have on the two advisory tasks, considering the mediating effects of board processes. Our results suggest that it is important to distinguish between different types of board members' knowledge and different board advisory tasks. Our findings have direct implications for research and practice. First, there is a need to go beyond the surface level understanding of what boards are doing. Second, our results emphasize the importance of organizational knowledge, and hence question the call for independent board members for advice provision.

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