Implicit to the democratic model is the notion that individual expertise in
governance is secondary to a claim to be a representative of a particular stakeholder
group. Although this suggests that governance expertise is mutually exclusive to
representative status – a telling observation about theorists’ beliefs about stakeholder
capabilities – more importantly it highlights the tension between theories of corporate
and non-profit governance. Corporate governance believes in board members
qualifying purely on the basis of expertise in managing and accumulating assets. In
contrast, non-profit governance is built on the notion that those managing an
organisation at the highest level should be on the board because of who they represent
rather than their ability to manage the assets of the organisation. It follows therefore
that the performance of a non-profit will be judged in part on the basis of who is on
their board rather than what they achieve whilst in that role (Abzug and Galaskiewicz,
2001). These broad perspectives are summarised in Table I.