Corporate Governance
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Institutional context and the prevalence of women on the corporate board of directors in a global perspective (completed) - Johanne Grosvold - supervised by Steve Brammer This project set out to better understand why there is such a sustained dearth of women in corporate board rooms across the world. Although there is significant and persistent variation in the share of board seats held by women globally, women are on average a minority in the corporate boardroom. The research was based on a novel dataset put together from different sources and which eventually covered 50 countries for an average of 6 years. In addition to the European countries, the database also included data for India, South Africa, China, Malaysia, Mexico, Chile and Argentina as well as Russia, the Baltic states, Turkey and Ukraine. The prevalence of women on the board was then assessed in a neo-institutional perspective and evaluated the degree to which country, industry and firm level institutional facets shaped the gender composition of corporate boards. Findings suggest that at the national level elements such as national culture, access to education and national governance practices play an important role in explaining whether women ascend to corporate board directorships. Furthermore, the research established that at the industry level, women were more prevalent on the boards of firms in industries where women constituted a larger share of the work force. Finally, at the firm level, companies that had on average younger boards and that utilised a nomination committee had more female board directors. Grosvold, J., Brammer, S. and Rayton, R. (2007) "Board diversity in the United Kingdom and Norway: an exploratory analysis." Business Ethics: European Review 16(4):344-357 Grosvold, J. and Brammer, S. (Forthcoming) "National institutional systems as antecedents of female board representation: An empirical study" Corporate Governance: An International Review |