As the world grows more complex and disruptive, corporate manufacturing boards are facing higher expectations and broader responsibilities, much like their counterparts in other sectors. Directors must now navigate a wider and fast-evolving range of risks, opportunities, and leadership challenges to fulfill their governance responsibilities. As a result, the board’s role is expanding beyond compliance and traditional oversight to include more active strategic guidance and stewardship of long-term value. Increasingly, boards are helping organizations navigate uncertainty and change, build resilience, and pursue growth amid geopolitical instability, digital transformation, and regulatory shifts.
This broadening of board engagement is certainly visible in the manufacturing sector where boards are confronting persistent trade and supply chain challenges alongside the risks and opportunities of disruptive technologies—particularly AI and the complexities of deploying it at scale. Many trace the beginning of this shift to the pandemic and the years that followed, when one crisis has seemed to come after another. Today, AI deployment, cybersecurity threats, tariffs, and geopolitical instability are regular boardroom topics. As one U.S. manufacturing board member told us, “Had you walked into our board meeting five years ago, you would not have heard nearly the same focus on cybersecurity, nor would you have heard anything about tariffs. These are some of the new topics that our board has to stay apprised of consistently.”
Rating of the Board's Understanding of AI and Its Business Implications
Source: Manufacturers Alliance and Egon Zehnder survey, July 2026.
To understand how manufacturing boards are adapting to this more complex environment, Manufacturers Alliance Foundation and Egon Zehnder combined survey data with first-person interviews of manufacturing CEOs, Chairs, and board members. The study explores how boards are responding to change, how prepared they are for what lies ahead, and how their relationships with CEOs and executive teams are evolving.
Several key themes emerged:
- Board agendas are expanding and becoming more fluid, with AI, technology, and geopolitics increasingly shaping discussions around strategy and growth. Our study found that the vast majority of board members (91%) say digital, AI, and technology transformation have become more important topics recently, fueling the central priorities of strategy and growth. Because of this, boards’ agendas are needing to be much more adaptable. As one leader who is both a Chair and an active member of several manufacturing boards told us, “If this was 10 years ago and August, I could probably tell you what next April’s agenda was going to look like. We can’t do that now. Right now, I could not tell you what November’s agenda looks like with any certainty.”
- Boards are evolving their composition and capabilities to address this expanded agenda and prepare for future challenges. Many are refreshing their membership, adding more sitting and recently retired CEOs, as well as functional experts (especially those with more advanced technological and international experience/networks). As one sitting CEO shared, “We couldn’t address a changing world with a defunct board. New perspectives are really adding a lot more.” They are also proactively addressing gaps in knowledge, particularly those related to AI. As one board member put it bluntly, “Directors who do not spend the time to get AI education—and it will be a journey—will be quickly irrelevant in the boardroom.”
- The relationship between boards and CEOs is becoming more collaborative, enabling more frequent dialogue, stronger strategic partnership, and better decision-making in uncertain conditions. Working in collaboration with CEOs can help directors stay more aligned with their organization’s priorities, better clarify their own roles, and focus their time on the most value-adding agenda items. “It’s crucial that there be complete transparency,” one CEO shared.
To learn more about the shifts in board priorities, knowledge focus, and expertise, read the full report.
View Report
