To get a general picture of the board of directors’ characteristics as well as the influence of these characteristics on firm performance in financial and accounting studies. By using a systematic literature review, the results show that (1) most of the studies use the Agency theory; (2) studies on the determinants of board characteristics are still limited, mainly focusing on corporate and board-level issues rather than organizational and individual level issues; (3) the current studies are methodologically limited (inconsistent definitions and measures, insufficient variables, and repetitive quantitative research methods).