Board Services

For companies on a steep growth and globalization curve - from start-up to global player - we help compose and engage boards that are agile, forward-thinking and change-ready. We take your board from good to great.

Start your board transformation journey.

Executive Search

Our global Executive Search Practice is at the core of our business in Austria and beyond. Our clients range from single-country organizations to globalising growth champions and established multinationals.

Leadership Advisory

Successful leadership takes many forms, and requires design, assessment and development.

Unleash Your Board’s Full Potential

When your company is scaling fast and expanding globally, leadership is everything. Amrop Austria partners with ambitious organizations navigating growth, transformation, and complexity - ensuring their boards are built to lead for what’s next.

Your board is the driving force behind your organization’s direction and success. Aligning directors, chairs, and non-executive directors around a shared vision is essential to unlocking meaningful, sustainable change. We support vital organizational transitions with powerful evaluation, assessment and hiring solutions.

As a leading executive search and leadership advisory firm, we deliver rigorous board search and board evaluation services designed to strengthen governance and future-proof performance. Our powerful assessment and appointment solutions help you secure leaders who not only fit - but elevate - your strategy.

At Amrop Austria, we don’t just fill seats. We advise you through your entire board lifecycle, helping you compose high-impact boards: agile, forward-thinking, and ready to lead through change. From Evaluation to Augmentation and Succession Planning - we take your board from good to great.

How can we help you?

Board Advisory Services

1Board Search: We help our clients define the optimal board composition, creating dynamic and insightful boards. Identifying strengths and analysing gaps in demographics, mindset, skills or diversity, we find leaders who make the difference between success and failure in a fast-moving world.

Your board acts as your organization’s north star. We assess and select unique talent who have the drive, commitment and strategic alignment to make your organisation the best it can be. Choose Amrop Austria for tailored, evidence-led leadership hiring solutions to unleash your board’s full potential.

2Board Evaluation: Amrop Austria's tailored board evaluation process provides businesses with a clear, data-driven review of their board's performance and governance. Using in-depth interviews, shadowing, and our proprietary Board Evaluation Tool (BET), we surface issues and offer actionable insights to enhance board effectiveness, strategic alignment, and governance practices.

Our evidence-based BET framework, combined with expert interviews and the latest research, delivers an objective assessment of your board. We uncover key dynamics in performance, governance, and strategic alignment, providing clear strategies to unlock your board’s full potential and drive organizational success. Your trusted advisors for What’s Next.

3Board Advisory: Alongside search and evaluation, we actively support the internal management of boards: benchmarking for external review, building strong board frameworks and advising on succession, compensation and compliance.

We helping boards align their vision and develop best practices with independent advice. We help to ensure your board is your operating strength, addressing the expectations of regulators and stakeholders, positioning your organization for sustainable growth.

Your board is a catalyst for change

A strong board is vital

A successful board is a diverse, high-performing team that guides an organization’s strategic direction and governance. It requires a careful balance of accountability, foresight, and performance to steer the organization toward its long-term goals.

We work with you to find board members who are perfectly aligned with your strategic vision and values as a business.

Tailored for your organization

Amrop Austria’s tailored board services are designed to enhance your board’s effectiveness. Our customized approach is based on your context, recognizing the unique challenges and strengths of your board.

These include board member recruitment to ensure the right mix of skills and diversity, comprehensive evaluations of both individual and collective performance, and a range of consulting services to strengthen your board’s capabilities.

A unified vision for the future

Our goal is to help you build a board culture rooted in diversity, strategic vision, and responsible governance - transforming your board into a dynamic, visionary force that leads your organization toward sustainable success.

Amrop Austria helps boards transform insight into alignment – and alignment into high-impact performance.

Your board can do more

Take your board from good to great.

Uncover valuable insights from Amrop's Boardroom

First Time NEDs: Nervousness is Healthy

Geopolitical shocks, ESG pressure and cyber threats are complicating today’s risk landscape. Shareholder scrutiny and ESG reporting are increasing the visibility of board decisions. NED candidates are worried about personal liability. But the real risks for NEDs come from weak governance, passive boards, and groupthink.

Governance For What’s Next 4: Future-Proof Evaluation

No matter the size or structure of your organization, the case for board evaluation has never been stronger. In a turbulent environment, stakeholders and (activist) shareholders are demanding clarity on how boards are securing results. Box-ticking is no longer enough. And there is a move from one-off appraisals to an integrated, cyclical approach.

Nominations Committee: Raising the Bar

As day-to-day listed business announcements reveal unexpected high-profile departures and last-minute recruitment scrambles, how can Nominations Committees take a more robust, strategic and wide-ranging approach to succession planning?

Request a consultation

Talk to our specialist board consultants to learn how we can support you to unlock your board’s full potential.

Every board has untapped potential

Frequently Asked Questions

1What is board recruitment?

Board recruitment is the process of identifying, evaluating, and appointing individuals to serve on a company’s board of directors, including directors, non-executive directors (NED) and chairpersons. At a basic level, it’s about building a group of people who will oversee the organization's governance, provide strategic guidance, and ensure accountability.

The process typically involves

1. Defining needs: The company assesses what skills or perspectives are missing on the board (e.g., finance, technology, international experience, governance expertise).

2. Sourcing candidates: Potential board members are identified through networks, executive search firms, or recommendations.

3. Evaluation & vetting: Candidates are assessed for:

Experience and expertise
Independence and integrity
Cultural fit with the board
Ability to contribute strategically (not operationally)

4. Selection & appointment: The board or nomination committee chooses the best candidate(s), and shareholders may formally approve them (depending on governance structure).

5. Onboarding: New board members are introduced to the company’s strategy, risks, and governance processes.

Why it matters

Good board recruitment is critical because the board:

Shapes long-term strategy
Oversees management (including the CEO)
Ensures compliance and risk management
Represents shareholder interests

A weak board can hurt a company; a strong, well-composed board can significantly improve performance and governance.

2When should a company use a board search firm?: Appointing an executive search firm for your board recruitment is important for companies who are experiencing rapid growth and need to hire director-level executives with the necessary skillset, experience and aligned vision from the start of their role. The rigorous process ensures that the final candidate has been fully assessed and evaluated before beginning their board appointment.

Your board is the most influential wing of your business, ensuring that your directors, chairs and NEDs share your organization’s vision and are strategically aligned is essential to enact valuable change moving forwards.

3How does board search vary from c-suite search?

Board search is a retained recruitment process for hiring directors to sit on the board (non-executive or independent directors, chairs, committee members).

Focus: governing the business
Typical roles: Non-Executive Director (NED), Independent Director, Board Chair
Scope: oversight, governance, risk management, advising management

C-level executive search is about hiring senior management. This includes roles like CEO, CFO, COO, CHRO, or other C-level and senior leadership positions.

Focus: running the business
Typical roles: CEO, CFO, Managing Director, VP-level
Scope: operational leadership, strategy execution, team management

4How long does a board search typically take?

A board search may take longer than an executive search, mainly because alignment and governance fit matter as much as capability. A typical timeline may last from 3 to 6 months.

This process includes:

Definition, role clarity & alignment. Unlike executive roles, multiple stakeholders (chair, nomination committee, investors) must agree upfront.
Mapping & longlisting
Approach & assessment
Final selection & appointment.

5What is involved in a board evaluation process?: A Board Evaluation is a comprehensive analysis of a Board's functioning and its members, using several data points. This typically includes a confidential & in-depth self-evaluation in the form of a questionnaire, one-on-one interviews with individual Board members and/or shadowing of Board meetings, and the development of a holistic board review and roadmap.

6How often should board assessments be done?: To create a sustainable and value-creating board evaluation model, a multi-year approach is recommended.

In year 1, we recommend face-to-face evaluation interviews of the Board & Sub Committees, use of Amrop's online Board Evaluation Tool, and consultation and recommendations for optimizing board functioning.

In year 2, we check on the progress of change implementation, re-issuing of the Amrop Board Evaluation Tool, and further recommendations for refining and optimizing board performance.

In year 3, we repeat the interview-based evaluation of the Board & Sub Committees , re-issue the Board Evaluation online questionnaire, check implementation of Year 1 & Year 2 recommendations, and suggest further recommendations for the future.

7How do you evaluate Board effectiveness?

Measuring board effectiveness isn’t about a single metric. Rather, it’s a mix of structure, behavior, and outcomes. The best approaches combine quantitative indicators with qualitative interviews and judgments.

The most important elements of board effectiveness include: clarity of role & responsibilities, board composition & competencies, board dynamics & culture, decision-making quality, board processes & operations, strategic Impact, and links to outcomes & performance via formal evaluation mechanisms.

In practice, the biggest differentiators of high-performing boards are:

Quality of challenge, not harmony
Future focus, not backward reporting
Cohesion with independence
Strong chair leadership

8How do you identify Board candidates who add real strategic value - not just credentials?: Our in-depth retained recruitment process goes well beyond CV credentials. We conduct detailed interviews, thorough background checks, competency assessments and reviews of strategic alignment to ensure that new board members bring value and fit to their new roles.

We are always searching for right competences & behaviors, not just Skills. As such, we apply competency matrixes to support all of our hiring, personality & behavioral overviews to support technical skills, and referencing when requested to triangulate reputation with personality & skill.

Diversity of all kinds

We believe in the importance of holistic diversity of board members. The breadth of candidates is key to successful boards - finding the right balance of complementary skills, experience, representation and points of view.

9How do you support Board succession and renewal planning?: Our approach to board search is not just “filling seats” but actively shaping a board’s future effectiveness.

Everything starts with understanding where the company is going – your context. We align long-term strategy with board composition, identify upcoming capability gaps, and map retirement timelines and tenure risks.

The process includes an evidence-based view of current board effectiveness, creating a baseline for renewal decisions and often unlocking difficult conversations. We build a forward-looking skills matrix, defining priority profiles for upcoming appointments and developing a multi-year succession plan. This is coupled with global mapping of board-ready and next-generation directors, boosted by our access to diverse and non-traditional talent pools. This process ensures we expand the field beyond “known names” and improve diversity and innovation on the board.