The Influence of Functional Experience in Finances on Board Directors’ Expected Behaviour

This article seeks to verify the influence of functional experience in finances, identified through the participation in audit and fiscal committees, their motivational types and the intensity of the expected values-behaviour relation. The work is exploratory and quantitative and applies the Mann-Whitney test so as to compare different groups, one with the characteristic of interest and the other without it. We applied the questionnaire directly to the target public - Schwartz Inventory - IVS. The total sample resulted in 121 board members in the country. As a result, we indicate that the strength of the expected values-behaviour relationship is significantly influenced by the members’ working experience in finances, especially relative to the motivational types of tradition and conservation, linked to the acceptance of norms and regulations. In a complementary way, we indicate that the results are not a ffected by the independence of the directors in relation to the ownership structure. Such findings extend literature findings by including the personal dimension in extensive studies, relating functional experience to expected behaviour, and finally shedding light on an inconclusive debate on board director independence.