Past research suggests that board decisions have an impact on the (broadly defi ned) performance and/or mission of organizations ( Zahra et al ., 2009 ;Milana and Ashta, 2012 ). Furthermore, the signifi cant interest in board issues within both academic and policy circles is partly driven by the fact that board decisions and board behavior are believed to be aff ected by board composition and board diversity (e.g., Van Ees et al ., 2009 ). In the academic literature, a large number of studies have analyzed the relationships between various board characteristics -such as board demographics, board diversity, and board processes -and organizational performance ( Carter et al ., 2010 ). Th ese studies focus almost exclusively on for-profi t fi rms. Much less is known about the role that the boards of non-profi t, mission-driven organizations play in attaining organizational goals ( Callen et al ., 2003 ;Alonso et al ., 2009 ).Th is article looks into the role that boards of microfi nance institutions (MFIs) play in the attainment of organizational goals. In contrast to formal banks, most MFIs have a dual objective of outreach to poor customers (i.e., outreach or social performance) and covering long-term costs (i.e., fi nancial performance or selfsustainability) ( Mersland et al ., 2011 ;Daher and Le-Saout , 2013 ). Th e question is how and to what extent the boards help them to reach these objectives.Board composition and poverty outreach of MFIs appear to be related.The proportion of independent, international, female, and/or founding board members appears to be associated with measures of outreach performance using data on MFIs in East Africa.Findings suggest that outreach performance is improved when MFI boards have a higher share of independent, international, and/or female members, which supports the hypothesis that board composition is important in helping MFIs to achieve their social objectives.1 JEL classifi cation codes: G21, G34.T he attributes of microfi nance ' s board members have an impact on attainment of their social objectives.

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This paper explores the contribution of the institutional perspective in understanding firm innovation returns from international alliances. It argues that formal and informal national institutions are of different nature, and give rise to explicit and tacit differences respectively between alliance partners. Partners exhibit different attitudes and abilities to negotiate and address such differences in leveraging the innovation potential of international alliances. As a result, we expect such differences to have distinct effects on partners' innovation performance: a) the effect of informal institutional differences is approximating sigmoid (S-shaped), with innovation performance slightly increasing first, then improving further and finally reaching a flattening plateau as informal institutional difference between partners increase; and b) the effect of formal institutional differences resembles an inverted U. Support is provided for both our contentions in a longitudinal sample of 110 UK biopharmaceutical firms. The paper contributes to existing understanding of firm innovation performance from international alliances, and broadly, to the management of internationalization in alliance portfolios.

This study investigates the association between the unique characteristics of microfinance institutions and board structure. The agency and resource dependence theories provided theoretical guidance for this study. Using a panel dataset of 63 microfinance institutions in East Africa, we found that the presence of regulations and international influence is associated with larger boards, while the presence of founders is associated with small boards and less board independence. There is a higher level of board gender diversity in microfinance institutions managed by founders. There is greater diversity of nationalities in microfinance institutions that are internationally influenced. The implications for practice and theory from this study are further discussed. JEL Classification: G21, G34

This study addresses the simultaneous and diverse effects of differences in informal and formal institutions on cross-border alliances' financial performance. We utilize data from 405 microfinance institutions (MFIs), based in 74 developing countries, that have alliances with partners from developed countries. We find that the impact of informal institutional differences between MFIs and their cross-border partners is sigmoid-shaped, with performance first increasing, then declining, before improving again as informal institutional differences grow large. By contrast, formal institutional differences appear to be detrimental to MFIs' performance. Consistent with our prediction, we find that MFIs' cross-border experience moderates both formal and informal institutional effects.