Selecting Board Members: The Impact of Common Knowledge on Gender Diversity - An Experimental Investigation

Abstract

Using a corporate governance experiment, we explore the role of common knowledge of diversity on board members' selection. Our results show that common knowledge of diversity impacts significantly and negatively the proportion of women selected on boards and in a higher proportion in sectors perceived as 'masculine'. We also bring evidence of an order effect that makes the selection of men on boards likelier for the first chosen members. This bias is stronger for male decision makers. This article provides implications and directions for future research for the understanding of decision making involved in the selection process for board members. 1In France, the law applies to firms listed on the CAC40 index or firms with more than 500 employees and a turnover exceeding €50 million. EXPBOARD 807'order effect' that makes the selection of men on boards likelier for the first chosen members: the first directors chosen are men … and only the last ones are women.Our paper is structured as follows: Section 2 describes our hypotheses and associated literature. Section 3 describes our experimental design. Section 4 presents our results, based on which, in Section 5, we discuss and conclude this contribution.

Gender spillovers from supervisory boards to management boards

“…In recent years, scientific interest in investigating the determinants of woman reaching board positions in the corporate sector has been growing (Doldor et al, 2016; Gabaldon et al, 2016; Galia et al, 2017; Hillman et al, 2007; Joecks et al, 2019; Mensi‐Klarbach et al, 2019; Seierstad et al, 2017). These studies show that firms feel an increasing outside pressure because of political regulations or increasing inside pressure by, for example, female employees.…”

Board diversity and performance in a masculine, aged and glocal supply chain: new empirical evidence

“…Board diversity and performance have rarely been investigated together in a specific supply chain or industry (Arfken et al, 2004). Few studies have been done between two sectors (Grosvold et al, 2007;Christiansen et al, 2016;Galia et al, 2017) and mainly considering gender diversity (Horak and Cui, 2017). Richard et al (2007) suggest that diversity has stronger effects on performance in the service industries than in the manufacturing industries while Ali et al (2011) show that this is particularly true with regard to gender diversity.…”

“…Alessandro Manello is based at the Department of ESOMAS, University of Turin, Turin, Italy. impact on corporate board composition but are mainly statistically unobservable (Erhardt et al, 2003;Galia et al, 2017). Therefore, the main topic of research remains the observable demographic diversity (Mahadeo et al, 2012).…”

“…Diversity in corporate board composition is not only one of the most promising and fastest growing areas of academic research (Perryman et al, 2016;Frijns et al, 2016;Comi et al, 2017;Galia et al, 2017) but also it remains at the top of the public policy agenda in many countries. However, after an extensive debate around the main effects of board diversity on performance (Murphy and McIntyre, 2007;Fern andez-Temprano and Tejerina-Gaite, 2020), the literature has not converged on clear and definite findings (Christiansen et al, 2016;Schwab et al, 2016;Green and Homroy, 2018).…”

“…Moreover, the automotive industry is interesting from at least three points of view. First, the automotive sector is a typically masculine industry, where women have traditionally been less present, which is also true for the construction, manufacturing, mining and engineering sectors, as opposed to services or luxury goods (Arena et al, 2015;Galia et al, 2017;Zenou et al, 2017;Serfati and Sauviat, 2019). Second, the automotive sector is an aged and mature industry because, although it has been partially forced toward a renewal by Industry 4.0 and by the challenges of electric powertrains (Muniz et al, 2019;Clarke and Piterou, 2019), its main technological pillar remains the internal combustion engine (Vervaeke and Calabrese, 2015;Alochet and Midler, 2019;Lasmar et al, 2019).…”