Gender Diversity Management Research Articles

El efecto mediador de la innovación empresarial en la relación entre diversidad de género y desempeño empresarial

This study investigates the mediating effect of corporate innovation on the relationship between gender diversity in top management and firm performance. Using panel data from French firms listed in the SBF120 index (2013-2017), Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) regressions revealed that the presence of woman on the board and the executive committee positively and significantly influences both corporate innovation and firm performance, and innovation mediates the relationship between gender diversity and firm performance. We conclude that gender diversity in the strategic level improves the firm’s decision-making process, facilitating the initiative to innovate.

Managing gender diversity and board dynamics: The role of male chairpersons of large listed firms

To better understand the links between gender diversity and board dynamics, 45 male chairs of large Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) firms were interviewed to identify the impacts of the appointment of women on board functioning. Chairs held very positive perceptions about the influence of women board members, including improved dynamics around reflexivity, communication and debate which assisted chairs to promote a sense of shared group membership and cohesion. Every chair consciously worked to ensure that board member gender was not made a salient attribute or social category. Irrespective of gender, chairs encouraged board members to judge themselves as fulfilling specific components of the board skills matrix, while also identifying as a social category of highly qualified professionals rather than as unique individuals or factions categorised by gender difference or business track records. A preliminary social-psychological framework is proposed to guide future research and to promote improved boardroom practices. JEL classification: D23, D74, G41

Management gender diversity, executives compensation and firm performance

PurposeThis paper aims to contribute to the discussion on the executives’ team and firm performance by investigating the relationships between executives’ compensation, management gender diversity and firm financial performance in growth enterprises market (GEM) listed firms in China.Design/methodology/approachData are collected from 461 companies listed on GEM boards during the period from the year 2016 to 2018. Specifically, executives’ compensation and female executives are set as the independent variables, and the proxy selected of corporate performance is Tobin’s Q ratio.FindingsThe results show that the correlation between corporate performance and executive cash payment is not significant, while executives’ equity-based compensation shows a significant positive correlation with firm performance. In addition, the participation of female executives is negatively associated with firm performance.Research limitations/implicationsThe results have practical implications for governments, policymakers and regulatory authorities, by indicating the importance of women to corporate success. In particular, the findings of this paper emphasize the specific background of GEM in China and provide empirical support for the value of women’s participation in corporate governance. In addition, the finding on the relationship between executive compensation and corporate performance of GEM listed companies provides guidance for the establishment of a performance compensation system of GEM listed companies in China.Originality/valueThis paper provides new evidence for the current literature of executive team and corporate performance. This is the first paper to adopt triangulation in theories from different disciplines including optimal contractual approach, managerial power approach as new perspectives of agency theory, upper echelons theory, motivational-hygiene theory and women leadership style theory. The results will contribute to provide guidance for enterprises to formulate an efficient compensation system and build a reasonable senior management team structure.

How inclusive is workplace gender equality research in the Chinese context? Taking stock and looking ahead

This study examines the status quo of workplace gender (in)equality research in the Chinese context. By reviewing 173 articles from 96 English journals throughout 1988–2020, it reveals that various forms of discrimination still exist against women in the labour market and workplaces. In particular, the persisting, and arguably widening, gender pay gap reflects not only the sticky floor, but also the glass ceiling, effects. The review also shows that researchers have tended to favour quantitative more than qualitative methods. While a range of theoretical perspectives has been mobilized to explain manifestations of gender inequality, a critical feminist approach has been rare for political, institutional, cultural, and research capability reasons. Moreover, there is limited interest in the notion of (gender) diversity management, suggesting that diversity management has not yet become part of the strategic HRM research in the Chinese context. Similarly, extant HRM and organizational behaviour research rarely treats gender (in)equality as a key construct to illuminate the potential effect of such a (perceived) form of organizational injustice on the well-being of female and minority male employees. Based on our review analysis, we identify several opportunities for future research to advance workplace gender scholarship and practice.

Leadership and Gender Roles in Academia

The glass ceiling effect is unfortunately still a reality in academia. Only 30% U.S University has female presidents. Given the multiple benefits of gender diversity in senior management, understanding gender gap in top leadership should be a priority. The purpose of this study was to investigate gender roles and leadership effectiveness in higher education. The results show that female leaders were seen less effective than men when committing relationship mistakes. Additionally, both male and female leaders were seen less effective when committing relationship mistakes than task mistakes. These findings signal the need to examine gender bias across other academic settings.

Financial reporting quality and the effects of CFO gender and board gender diversity

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the effects of chief financial officer (CFO) gender, board gender diversity and the interaction of both factors on financial reporting quality (FRQ) proxied by restatements.Design/methodology/approachRestatements indicate inaccurate financial reporting. The authors use fixed effects conditional logistic regression models to compare firms with and without restatements matched by size, industry and year. The authors’ unique matched–pair sample consists of 546 listed US firms from the period 2005–2016.FindingsThe authors’ results provide evidence that restatements are less likely when the CFO is a woman and when a higher proportion of women serve on the board of directors (BOD). Considering the interaction effects, the authors find evidence that women on the BOD are more effective at reducing restatement likelihood when the CFO is also a woman. And that although female CFOs reduce restatement likelihood generally, they have no statistically significant effect on restatement likelihood when the BOD is all-male.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first that the authors know of to consider how FRQ is affected by the interaction effects of CFO gender and board gender diversity. The findings corroborate upper echelons theory and extend the understanding of the effects of managerial gender diversity at a time when firms face growing pressure to increase gender diversity at the highest levels. The unique sample, methodology and findings provide new insights into the impact of gender on FRQ that has important policy implications.

Board Of Directors Gender Diversity And Real Earnings Management: Does Female Board Of Director Matter?

The Board of directors' characteristic plays an important role as a monitoring mechanism in corporate governance. Previous research shows that gender could determine the existence of manager opportunistic behavior. The existence of females on the board of directors could reduce agency conflict such as earnings management. This research aimed examine gender diversity in explaining earnings management. The sample of this research is the non-financial company listed in Indonesia Stock Exchange (Idx) during 2014-2018. The research method conduct quantitative approach. We used multiple regression analysis to examine the association between board of director gender diversity on real earnings management. The result shows that gender diversity is negatively associated with earnings management. Gender diversity indicates that the number and percentage of female directors could reduce the level of real earnings management, especially through abnormal discretionary expenses. Secondly, there is no different level of real earnings management between firms with and without gender diversity in their board structures.

Are Organizational Gender Diversity Management Practices Effective?

While organizations use gender diversity management (GDM) to promote women’s participation, it can have negative unintended consequences for their integration. However, integration is seldom accounted in GDM evaluations as it traditionally focused just on women’s representation. We develop a novel network-based measure of gender diversity which accounts for both representation and integration in a team. Specifically, we evaluate the relative effectiveness of different approaches to GDM using both, the traditional and the new gender diversity measures. This is analyzed using Bayesian Informative hypothesis evaluation of network information from 401 teams across nine countries and six sectors. We find GDM practices to largely be ineffective. This could follow from current efforts being misguided by traditional measures to focus on representation at the cost of integration. In fact we found the traditional measure to inflate the effectiveness of practices, as compared to the new measure. Our findings suggest that policymakers must consider integration along with the representation of women to understand the net effectiveness of GDM.

The Unintended Consequences of Organizational Gender Diversity Strategies on Psychological Safety

As gender equity continues to be a pressing goal, organizations are increasingly adopting gender diversity management strategies, and sometimes these strategies may have unintended consequences. Researchers have identified two primary competing gender diversity management strategies: the gender blindness strategy, which encourages downplaying gender differences, and the gender awareness strategy, which encourages celebrating gender differences (Koenig & Richeson, 2010; Martin & Phillips, 2017). We propose that the gender blindness approach, despite having potential positive consequences for women (e.g., Martin & Phillips, 2017), leads to lower psychological safety among employees, compared to a gender awareness approach or no strategy at all. We also argue that, as a consequence of this effect on psychological safety, a gender blindness strategy reduces perceptions of organizational openness to diverse opinions and increases employees’ vigilance of speech. We find support for these ideas in two pre-registered experimental studies.

Gender diversity and earnings management: the case of female directors with financial background

Past evidence generally suggests that the presence of female directors on corporate boards tends to improve earnings quality due to these directors’ superior monitoring abilities. However, it is not clear which characteristics and skills of female directors drive such abilities. In this paper, we focus on the financial background of female directors, an area which remains largely unexplored in existing literature. The results show that the participation of female directors with relevant financial background improves earnings quality more than the participation of female directors without such background. In addition, our findings suggest that only female directors possessing relevant financial background and having fewer outside directorships are able to mitigate earnings management and therefore overcommitting expert female directors with more outside directorships would diminish their monitoring ability. We did not find any evidence suggesting that female directors without relevant financial background are able to mitigate earnings management, irrespective of their outside directorships or tenure. We interpret our findings within a theoretical framework that draws on a number of economic and social theories. The results are generally robust after controlling for potential endogeneity problems.

Impact of Gender and Expatriation Choice on Career Paths in Supply Chain Management: Evidence from Master of Science Graduates

Zinn et al. (2018) and Esper et al. (2020) call for more research on gender diversity in Supply Chain Management, and our study responds to that call. We analyze the career path of 1081 international graduates from a higher degree program in Supply Chain Management from 2000 to 2017 to assess the impact of gender and expatriation choice on hierarchical progression. We explore two variables that may affect graduates’ career paths, namely, their gender and their expatriation choices, and compare their relative importance. Our analysis shows that there were, on average, 33.5% women recruited in the MSc and that this has not significantly changed over the years. It also shows that gender significantly influences the number of years spent at each level in the career hierarchy and the level reached. Regarding expatriation choice, this variable has some significant impacts on career progression. Finally, statistics indicate that gender has a far greater influence on career progression than expatriation choice. Overall, this study proves the difficulties for women in enjoying the same career progression as men in the field of Supply Chain Management.

The interaction between gender and informal social networks: An East Asian perspective

AbstractDespite the increasing attention to gender diversity management in recent decades, there is a dearth of studies that provide an East Asian perspective on this topic. We argue that informal social networks have a crucial role in macrosocial and organisational approaches to diversity, such as social attitudes and laws, which in turn may affect organisational routines and practices of diversity management. In this article, we develop a research framework that connects gender diversity approach across macrosocial and organisational levels of analysis. Responding to the call for contextual research, our focus in this article is on how gender diversity management in East Asia is affected by informal social networks at the macrosocial level, namely guanxi in China, yongo in South Korea, and jinmyaku in Japan. Our review posits informal social networks as salient in mediating the shape and effect of institutional mechanisms at the macrosocial level on diversity practices at the organisational level.

Gender diversity on board of directors: comprehensive analysis of female directorate networks and the linkage between busyness and performance

PurposeDrawing from social capital theory, this study aims to investigate the manifested critical barriers in deriving and implementing gender diversity policies, paying particular attention to the role multiple directorships play in shaping the directors’ behavior and the dynamic of the board of directors. The study comprehends social capital as a multi-dimensional concept and uses combinations of interconnected internal, external, expressive and instrumental networks.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses a mixed-method approach through which the quantitative approach is supplemented by a qualitative research method to comprehensively examine the development and impact of female directors’ networks in Australia. To do so, a large data set consisting of 2,527 observations of all Australian firms and data emerged from semi-structured interviews with female directors were brought together and analyzed.FindingsThe findings reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between the size of women’s directorate networks and firm performance. The study additionally explicates the key moderating factors influencing the optimal number of multiple directorships. The key power-based and psychological well-being-related benefits of the inter- and intra-organizational interactions and “open” directorate networks for individual directors are further discussed. The findings also elucidate the status quo vis-à-vis labyrinth metaphor and excessive numbers of directorships.Social implicationsThe study should be of interest to those interested in effective gender diversity management. The findings would assist in enabling tangible outcomes for women through advanced processes and systematic investment in and institutionalization of well-structured, equitable opportunities provided via gender-responsive policies dedicated to the education and training of future female directors.Originality/valueCalling for social dialogues and discussions on non-financial factors, this study adds to the scarce literature on influential factors related to diversity management policies and practices on the board of directors.

Multicultural Classroom Management: Strategies for Managing the Diversity of Students in Elementary Schools and Madrasah Ibtidaiyah

A comfortable classroom environment cannot be separated from the role of the teacher in managing the learning environment. Heterogeneous classroom conditions are a challenge for teachers to create a conducive and meaningful learning atmosphere. This is because each student has different characters, needs, and potentials that need to be developed. On the other hand, the heterogeneity of students if not managed properly can be a source of various problems in the classroom. Starting from bullying, the learning atmosphere is uncontrollable, even the attitude of antipathy to diversity triggers other negative attitudes, such as discrimination and injustice. Therefore, to overcome this problem, it requires the ability of teachers to create a classroom environment that respects diversity (multicultural). Based on this view, multicultural class management is needed. This is because multicultural classroom management is believed to be able to foster student diversity while still adhering to universal human values that are just and in favor of equality. Multicultural classroom management is also able to provide educational services that are by human needs, and respect differences with the human approach. On this basis, this study discusses teacher strategies in managing the diversity of students using a multicultural classroom management approach. Multicultural classroom management needs to be developed to create a more humanist and democratic learning atmosphere which is needed to foster the diversity of students in the classroom. Among the multicultural class management strategies that can be carried out are managing gender diversity, social status, ethnicity, including intelligence

GENDER DIVERSITY IN RESEARCH TEAMS AND CITATION IMPACT IN ECONOMICS AND MANAGEMENT

AbstractThe aim of this paper is twofold: (1) contribute to a better understanding of the place of women in Economics and Management disciplines by characterizing the difference in levels of scientific collaboration between men and women at the specialties’ level; and (2) investigate the relationship between gender diversity and citation impact in Economics and Management. Our data, extracted from the Web of Science database, cover global production as indexed in 302 journals in Economics and 370 journals in Management, with, respectively, 153,667 and 163,567 articles published between 2008 and 2018. Results show that collaborative practices between men and women are quite different in Economics and Management. We also find that there is a modest positive and significant effect of gender diversity on the citation impact of publications. Mixed‐gender publications (coauthored by men and women) receive more citations than nonmixed papers (written by same‐gender author teams) or single‐author publications. The regression analysis also indicates that there is, for Economics, a small negative effect on citations received if the corresponding author is a woman. Finally, the country (affiliation) of the corresponding author affects the citations received in the two disciplines.

Corporate social responsibility, board gender diversity and real earnings management: The case of Jordan

This study examines the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting, board gender diversity (BGEND) and real earnings management (REM). It also investigates how the relatio...

A systematic literature review of board diversity in agile healthcare supply chain

The healthcare supply chain plays a fundamental role in addressing the healthcare needs of local and global communities. The composition of the healthcare sector, particularly regarding cultural and gender diversity, is an antecedent to effective medical healthcare management, and achieving organisational performance. Following an appraisal of the selected literature, six themes emerged in the research area of diversity in healthcare. These were cultural diversity management, gender diversity management, governance and leadership, board management, Indigenous healthcare, and healthcare workers and teamwork. Findings from the study suggest the advancement of critical elements of organisational diversity research in the agile medical supply chain, including aspects of the influences of workforce heterogeneity on board governance practices, organisational culture and climate-specific studies, organisational performance and non-performance outcomes, and diversity disparities in senior and executive-level leadership roles. This study can influence regulatory decision-making, strategic policy origination, and operational diversity management programs.

Analiza strategije poslovanja između muškaraca i žena lidera u tekstilnoj industriji

The main goal of this paper is to determine the differences in business strategy between male and female leaders and the dominant leadership style in the textile industry. The research was conducted during June and July 2020. The subject of the research is the analysis of the business strategy between men and women leaders in the textile industry in Serbia. The subjects were women and men leaders of companies in the field of textile industry in Serbia. Starting from the definitions of leadership and characteristics of leaders, the questionnaire was compiled to collect data on the opinion of respondents on the topic of differences in business strategy. The obtained results confirm the assumption that there are differences in business strategy between men and women leaders in the textile industry, which can contribute to companies to strengthen and improve their market position through gender diversity in top management.

Top Management Gender Diversity and Internationalisation in Different Institutional Contexts: Evidence from Germany and Poland

The diversity of top management teams is a topic of increasing scholarly and practical interest. It is argued that globalisation requires international operating firms to staff their management teams with international and diverse members. We investigate the influence of institutional environments on gender and internationality diversity in boards to shed light on the question “Why do top management teams look the way they do?” Our sample includes top management team members of the largest stock listed firms in Germany and Poland. The sample consists of 60 firms and 852 individuals from 2019. Our findings suggest that the presence of non-natives and women on corporate boards and the international orientation of board members, in terms of education, work experience and directorships, are attributable to national institutional systems. While Germany´s top managers are becoming increasingly internationally diverse and have increasing gender diversification, the figures for Poland are also increasing, but on a much smaller scale. We argue that country-level institutions play an important role in shaping the diversity of corporate boards. Future research should place more emphasis on the external national environment when investigating board diversity.

Raising the bar? Top management teams, gender diversity, and environmental sustainability

ABSTRACT This study examines how female board directors and top managers may influence an organization’s decision to adopt ISO 14001. Upper Echelon Theory (UET) argues that an organization’s outcomes are based on the decisions made by its directors and managers, who however are influenced by their background characteristics. Therefore, it is crucial to assess how gender diverse boards and top management teams affect the likelihood of sustainability initiatives such as the ISO 14001 certificate being adopted. According to data gathered from Kenyan companies, having women on boards increases the probability of ISO 14001 adoption. On the contrary, there was weak correlation with having women in the top management team. Establishing gender diversity also supports adopting global sustainability initiatives, such as ISO 14001, as a strategy to enhance environmental performance of a firm. This study advances the CSR literature on establishing gender diversity in the workplace as a way to improve corporate performance.