12.2.2 Methodology

The respondents were asked two questions. The first question asks which relationships are considered to have a negative influence on independence. In order to identify the circumstances and relationships a supervisory director is hampered by, a list of seven options is given in the survey. These include (1) each stockholding or (2) stockholdings in excess of a certain percentage, (3) a long tenure, (4) a prior position as executive director in the company, and finally (5) business, (6) family and (7) social relationships. The first six options are already included in the British and Dutch independence criteria, but the seventh option (social relationship) is not part of these lists of independence criteria. In Sweden, stockholdings are not part of the list of independence criteria, neither are social relationships.

The second question asks to whom the supervisory director feels accountable. The eight options given as a possible answer to this question are (1) shareholders, (2) employees, (3) suppliers, (4) customers, (5) the state, (6) society, (7) debt providers or (8) others. This question is used to investigate whether the answers to the questions about threats to independence differ between groups of supervisors.

The answers to these two questions are analyzed by means of Ward’s Cluster Analysis1 with squared Euclidian distances in SPSS. The analysis is performed to see whether respondents in different clusters differ from each other with respect to characteristics, such as age, gender, experience, the age at the time of the first supervisory board position, education, background, number of supervisory board positions, time spent on these positions, background, type of organisation and characteristics of their supervisory board. The differences are tested with an F-test. The results are described in the next section.