Female CEOs and Corporate Innovation Behaviors—Research on the Regulating Effect of Gender Culture

Abstract

With the increasing number of female senior executives, the relationship between female senior executives and corporate innovation behaviors has attracted widespread attention, but few works have studied the influences of female CEOs on innovation behaviors and their mechanisms. This paper studies the relationship between CEO's gender and the selection of corporate innovation behaviors, as well as the regulating effect of gender culture on the relationship between them. It was discovered in the studies that (1) if compared with male CEOs, female CEOs have significantly promoted both incremental innovation behaviors and radical innovation behaviors; (2) gender culture has positively regulated the relationship between CEO's gender and corporate incremental innovation behaviors, yet the regulating effect of gender culture on the relationship between CEO's gender and corporate radical innovation behaviors is not significant. Thus, the government needs to further foster a gender culture with gender equality, and actively promote the positive effect of female CEOs in corporate innovations.

The Effect of Incremental Innovation and Switching-Over to Architectural Innovation on the Sustainable Performance of Firms: The Case of the NAND Flash Memory Industry

“…However, the research associating types of innovation with firm performance is limited. Further, extant research focuses more on understanding the effects of radical or incremental innovation of new products when correlating the effect of technological innovation on the firms' performance [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. This study identified that the continuity of incremental innovation, scaling, is important to improving the firms' sustainable performance based on the findings from the NAND flash industry.…”

“…Then the dominant architecture moves to the left again for continuous incremental innovation until new architecture is introduced to reframe the innovation activities in the industry. In terms of benefits from innovation, extant research has focused more on incremental and radical innovation types, including new product development [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. The research focus on incremental innovation might be due to the fact that incremental innovation is used extensively and is easily attempted in the industry.…”

“…Researchers have emphasized the importance of dominant design; many studies in this research area have focused specifically on the influence of dominant design in a firm's innovation performance. Previous research has argued that dominant design hinders innovation [31] or negatively influences innovation by increasing the competitor's production cost, increasing the concentration of the market, increasing their monopoly power and reducing product choice, with In terms of benefits from innovation, extant research has focused more on incremental and radical innovation types, including new product development [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. The research focus on incremental innovation might be due to the fact that incremental innovation is used extensively and is easily attempted in the industry.…”

Why Do Companies Choose Female CEOs?

“…Women will also develop themselves in the process of participating in sustainable development. After that, family and marriage patterns also underwent major changes, and this change was also gradually strengthened, thus forming the male-dominated gender culture [9]. Under this gender culture, people gradually formed their understandings and even prejudices against male and female.…”

“…However, as we see, with women's education levels going up and their years of working and working experience increasing, their positions and levels have not improved accordingly. Only marriage patterns also underwent major changes, and this change was also gradually strengthened, thus forming the male-dominated gender culture [9].…”