One Role Is Not Big Enough: A Multi-theoretical Study of Board Roles in SMEs

The purpose of this paper is to explore and verify roles of boards as bundle of tasks in the context of SMEs in a small country. This is a descriptive study based on the perceptions of CEOs. The objective was to find empirical evidence for what boards in small and medium sized companies perceive they do in terms of tasks and roles. A survey was sent out to 560 SMEs in Iceland and the response rate was 21%. Factor analysis shows that three different roles can be measured in SMEs: Monitoring role, Strategic role and Resource and Advice role. The results of this research show that boards in SMEs can and do have more than one role and are more active in strategy than often is assumed.