Toward an enhanced level of corporate governance: tech committees as a game changer for the board of directors

The aim of the study is to understand what “technology” really stands for in the “tech committees” label within the board, or—to phrase it differently—to ascertain what tech committees do and whether, and how, they enrich the current level of corporate governance. As a result, we find that even if AI has already entered the boardroom, it has not entered the “corporate governance architecture” of companies: directors employ AI, but there is no internal procedure telling them how to effectively, efficiently, and responsibly leverage its potentials and how to minimize the risks arising from its employment. Hence, to address the current lack of AI governance at the corporate level, we propose a two-layer model that pivots around tech committees and grants them a key role. In a nutshell, the article, by providing the first empirical attempt to investigate what tech committees do, unveils what they are not doing, and outlines what they should be doing instead.