Can Female Executives Enhance Organizational Resilience? Evidence from China during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Organizational resilience is the potential ability of a system to endure adversity, sustain its existing structure, and recover quickly after a shock. However, we know little about the factors that influence organizational resilience in the context of specific emergent situations. The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a new opportunity for research on the influencing factors in organizational resilience. In this study, we explore the impact of female participation in executive teams on organizational resilience on the basis of female executives’ utility, upper echelons theory, and organizational resilience. We use 1755 listed Chinese A-share companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen as our study sample and test them by using OLS models with robust standard errors and Cox risk proportion models. The results suggest that companies with a higher proportion of female executives before the shock will experience fewer losses and will take a shorter amount of time to recover from the attack. By revealing the impact of female executives on organizational resilience, this paper fills the gap in the relevant literature and further explores the practical value and managerial implications.