Without oversimplifying this study, it breaks with the prior corporate governance literature in two major ways. First, unlike with other empirical research this study defined firm performance in terms of K&IC, rather than physical capital. To the knowledge of the authors, this study is the first to address the relationship between the structure of a board of directors and a firm’s K&IC performance. Findings from this study will broaden the current understanding of the impact of this corporate governance mechanism on firm performance within the new economic setting. Second, this study provides one of the first international comparative investigations of the association between board independence and firm performance. The large majority of prior empirical research has used data only from the United States (Vafeas and Theodorou, 1998). Generalizability of the results from these studies, however, is questionable. The assumption of a utility maximizing agent is viewed to be universal (Agrawal and Knoeber, 1996). Recently questions have been raised about the impact of different cultural, social and environmental factors on a board’s independence and firm performance (Main and Johnston, 1993; Conyon and Mallin, 1997). With increasing globalization it is imperative to empirically examine the aforementioned relationship in nations other than the United States to develop a more comprehensive understanding. This study, in part, fills this gap by empirically testing the association between board independence and K&IC performance in three nations possessing (South Africa, Sweden and the United Kingdom) different infrastructure features.