Women’s entry into the corporate community at the board level

Abstract

Women's entry onto board positions has often paid greater attention to the manifest outcome of representation by way of examining the rate of representation, targets achieved as well as contending quantitative and economic measures of board effectiveness. However, few studies have examined how women gain entry onto boards. There is also a lack of qualitative and non-economic studies. This can be attributed to the exclusive focus on human capital and social network theories and quantitative methodology, ignoring the complexities of personal-social-institutional and board dynamics. In view of this gap in the literature, a theoretical discourse on human capital theory and resource-based theory is explored and its relevance to women directors' gaining entry onto boards is discussed. The aim of this paper is to explore how women gain entry onto the PLC (Public Listed Companies) boards in Malaysia. Qualitative semi-structured interviews with five (5) women directors as participants and with three (3) male directors as key informants representing public listed companies in Malaysia were undertaken and analyzed. The findings revealed several factors that enable women to gain entry onto boards, namely personal characteristics, corporate experience, social networks and institutional factors. The ability to re-engineer oneself was found to be a critical personal factor in gaining entry onto boards, besides education and specialization in certain fields. Corporate strategic experience appears to be a critical strategic space for women to gain entry onto boards, besides the conventional top corporate positions. Also, there is great importance in the need for adequate corporate exposure to enhance women's chances to gain board ship status. The social network was reaffirmed as was in previous studies. These findings provide a partial claim for the resource-based theory and provide a more nuanced understanding of experience as part of human capital stock in human capital theory.