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ABSTRACT. For a long period of time, researchers from the corporate governance field have been interested in finding out what drives companies' performance. The present study identifies five attributes of boards -size, age, female representation, proportion of non-executive directors, and chairman-CEO duality -in an attempt to link these to diversification strategy and financial performance. These relations are investigated using archival sources of data for a sample of 56 publicly traded companies from an emerging economy. The results are consistent with other studies performed abroad and at the same time offer new theoretical and managerial perspectives on the issues analyzed. The findings offer some valuable insights into the decision of corporate diversification at both theoretical and managerial level. The results provide support for both managerial hegemony and agency theory. Board members have little involvement in the strategy-making process as this is most often an attribute of managers, where as the existence of more members without executive responsabilities is a determinat of superior company performance.

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