Gender Diversity in the Boardroom and Firm Performance: What Exactly Constitutes a “Critical Mass?”

Joecks, Jasmin; Pull, Kerstin; Vetter, Karin

doi:10.1007/s10551-012-1553-6

Cited by 730 publications

(745 citation statements)

References 46 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

627

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…And women, it is argued, will pave the way for more women: the claim is that women in leadership positions will ensure a greater influx of additional women once "critical mass" is achieved (Joecks et al, 2013). "Women will tear down the external barriers [to women's advancement] once we achieve leadership roles.…”

Section: "There Is a Compelling Business Case For Gender Parity"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Stories of women at the top: narratives and counternarratives of women’s (non-)representation in executive leadership

Baumann

2017

Palgrave Commun

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

There is ongoing debate on a global level about (the lack of) women in senior leadership. Despite years of discussion about the alleged advantages of gender diversity progress has been glacial: top management roles and senior positions of power throughout society remain largely the preserve of men. This critical review explores how women's power is narratively constructed in two dominant European cultures, Germany and Britain, and how stories told about women's representation in top level executive leadership may impact individual identities, possibilities and ambitions. Using thematic and discourse analysis, this article covers empirical research, academic writing, government reports, non-fiction and fictional writing, and some anecdotal evidence gathered by the author, who has executive experience spanning two decades in multinational corporations. For reasons of space, I focus on just three of the stories currently dominating the discussion about gender equality in business: first, the story that there is nothing or little left to fight for, the battle is won; second, the story that gender equality is straightforward because there is a business case for parity; and third, the story that women are not at the top because women choose not to run the world. Each of these has a counternarrative supported by empirical and anecdotal evidence, which I outline; nonetheless, I argue, they serve to maintain the status quo in leadership, reassuring those in power that they have no responsibility for (and therefore no responsibility seriously to address) the lack of women in top positions. I suggest on the basis of the evidence that the cultural narratives of Britain and Germany are remarkably similar and that the prospects of gender equality at the top occurring in our lifetime are dismal. A juxtaposition of the (contradictory) narratives paints a more holistic picture of the discursive sea we all swim in, relevant to scholars of gender equality and women's leadership across disciplines as well as government policy departments. As qualitative methodologies, narrative and discourse analysis cannot provide definitive answers. They can, however, provide a basis for reflecting on how dominant stories impact individuals and the cultural atmosphere. This article is published as part as part of a collection on the role of women in management and business.

show abstract

Section: "There Is a Compelling Business Case For Gender Parity"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Stories of women at the top: narratives and counternarratives of women’s (non-)representation in executive leadership

Baumann

2017

Palgrave Commun

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Over and above that threshold, the performance of a more diverse board exceeded that of a completely male board. Joecks, Pull and Vetter (2013) further substantiated their results, distinguishing firms with (a) no woman on their supervisory board from firms with (b) one woman on the board, (c) two women on the board and (d) three or more women on the board. Running OLS and RE-regressions the authors found that having three or more women on the board significantly increases ROE as compared to having only one woman on the board.…”

Section: Review Of Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 56%

“…When ROA is used as the dependent variable, TILTED_MB_ dummy, size of the supervisory board and UNIFORM_SB_dummy significantly affect performance. Specifically, the positive effect of the tilted groups variable in management board suggests support for a critical mass of women in the boardroom, as proposed by Joecks, Pull and Vetter (2013) citing Kanter (1997). Furthermore, the size of the supervisory board also has a significant and positive effect on performance, suggesting that larger boards Source: authors' calculation bring additional value-added expertise.…”

Section: Empirical Findingsmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…However, this is not the case in the field of corporate governance. Joecks, Pull & Vetter (2013) examined gender diversity in the boardroom and firm performance using a data set of 151 listed German firms for the years 2000-2005. The authors compared firm performance for different board types according to the classification by Kanter (1977), and then analyzed the link between board type and firm performance in a multivariate regression analysis.…”

Section: Review Of Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our empirical investigation builds explicitly upon critical mass theory, which has been tested by Joecks, Pull and Vetter (2013). Joecks, Pull and Vetter (2013, p. 5-6), citing Kanter (1997) note that, in her analysis of group interaction processes, Kanter constructs four different categories of groups according to their composition: uniform groups, skewed groups, tilted groups and balanced groups.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Critical Mass in the Boardroom of Croatian Banks

Kramarić

Miletić

2017

South East European Journal of Economics and Business

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper investigates the influence of gender diversity in the boardroom of Croatian banks on their performance. Specifically, we deal with both management and supervisory boards. Moreover, based on critical mass theory, the authors try to find out what constitutes critical mass. Using a static panel analysis on a sample of all commercial banks that operated in the period 2002-2014, three models were estimated with return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE) and net interest margin (NIM) as dependent variables. Board structure variables include gender of the chairperson, size of the board, share of women on the board and four dummy variables constructed on critical mass theory, specifically uniform group, skewed group, tilted group and balanced group. Other controls employed in the model include capital adequacy, the growth rate of assets at the bank level, ownership, age and a crisis dummy. The main finding is that when a critical mass of 20%-40% of women on the management board has been reached, bank performance improves.

show abstract

Women on corporate boards and firm financial performance: Empirical evidence from a multi‐country in Asia

Tran,

Nguyen,

Lien

2024

Bus Strat Dev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between board gender diversity in management teams and financial performance of Asian firms in the transportation and logistics industry. To fulfill the research objectives, a total of 444 firm‐year observations operating in various nations of the Asia region from 2017 to 2020 were used in this present study, which was done by adopting the panel data regression approach. Results from a study demonstrate that the presence of female board members in the management structure will have a positive effect on financial performance of Asian firms in the sector of transportation and logistics at a certain level. Finally, our findings contribute to proposing some governance recommendations to enhance the presence and role of women in management positions in a firm's organizational structure in particular, while also promoting firm performance in the transportation and logistics industry in general.

show abstract

Gender Diversity in the Boardroom and Firm Performance: What Exactly Constitutes a “Critical Mass?”

Cited by 730 publications

References 46 publications

Stories of women at the top: narratives and counternarratives of women’s (non-)representation in executive leadership

Stories of women at the top: narratives and counternarratives of women’s (non-)representation in executive leadership

Critical Mass in the Boardroom of Croatian Banks

Women on corporate boards and firm financial performance: Empirical evidence from a multi‐country in Asia

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About