The understanding of the board of a corporation and its behavior is limited, despite the board’s societal importance. We present a contingency approach to the board’s functional emphasis, considering a fourth function in addition to monitoring, decision making, and service or resource provision. The additional function is conflict resolution (or principal identification). The approach contrasts with mainstream research by assuming that the firm is a nexus of investments, avoiding the empirical assumption that the shareholder is the sole principal. We derive propositions that are not restricted to any empirical category of a corporation, and address praxis implications for managing functional disharmony. © 2008 Virtus Interpress.