The board of directors is a highly complex organ considering its origin andreasons for existence, board members´ relation to the corporation, shareholdersand officers, and board´s functioning and models. The corporate governancemovement has defined the board´s main activities and responsibilitiesunder a prism that includes three main roles: the decision-making role, themonitoring role and the relational role. However, when analyzing two of themost important jurisdictions (the United States and the United Kingdom)it seems that the board of directors has problems to perform its functionsproperly. The analysis shows the board as an imperfect and limited organsubject to a variety of tensions and interests. Thus, it would be of great helpif the board could be analyzed under a new outlook in which the first role isto be a manager of tensions.