Abstract

Board of directors and General Manager are considered the most important factors in control and supervision on firm management and shareholders’ resources protection. The board of directors' main responsibility is to set up efficient governance on the firm affairs in alignment with shareholders' interests and balance in the interests of its different beneficiaries including customers, staff, investors and local societies, to provide independent supervision on executive directors’ function, and to challenge the commercial decisions and strategy of executive management. Board of directors is the ultimate responsible for operations and financial health of the firm as well . Studies about board of directors’ characteristics can be divided into two domains of components associated with board of directors' characteristics and its effect on other variables. The current gap in literature creates motivations for this study. No comprehensive study has been initially existed so far in terms of the board of directors' characteristics measurement. Issues associated with measurement in social sciences and board of directors' characteristics scales have been rarely discussed in accounting literature. However, this study fills these gaps in literature and prepares a wide review of board of directors' characteristics scales existing in accounting literature. Furthermore, this review discusses the existing measurement issues in the board of directors' characteristics concept and prepares recommendations for considering the current issues in the future research.

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