In this paper we analyse boards of directors as workgroups, i.e. groups of people that perform one or more tasks within an organisational context. Building on previous studies, we developed a model that relates group’s social-psychological processes to three different board tasks: service, monitoring and networking. We tested our model through a survey on 301 large manufacturing firms in Italy. Our findings support the idea that (a) process variables and, to a limited extent, demographic variables significantly influence board task performance; (b) board processes have a different impact on each specific board task; (c) board task performance varies depending upon firm and industry characteristics.