دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی رئیس هیات مدیره زن و عملکرد شرکت - الزویر 2018

Abstract

Using a sample of 394 French firms for the period of 2001 to 2010, we study the relationship between female directorship and firms’ accounting (ROA and ROE) and market-based (Tobin’s Q) performance. We find that female directorship significantly increases ROA and ROE, and significantly decreases Tobin’s Q. We postulate that these relationships are affected by the attributes of female directors. To this end, we collect a set of nine different attributes of female directors capturing their monitoring capabilities and contribution to the board’s human capital (demographic and board relational attributes). We find that the positive relationship between accounting performance and female directorship remains when we include these attributes, while the negative relationship between Tobin’s Q and female directorship disappears. Interestingly, the different attributes of female directors do not uniformly affect accounting and market-based performance. We explain the different relationships between attributes and firm performance by the tradeoff between the benefits and costs of diversity on board effectiveness, particularly in a low investor protection environment.

6. Concluding remarks

This research aims to examine the relationship between board gender diversity and firm accounting and market-based performance. This relationship has been studied extensively in the literature with mixed results. We contribute to this literature by exploring the importance of female directors’ attributes as a driver of the probable relationship between the presence of women on boards and firm performance. We use a sample of 394 French firms, and collect financial and board structure data from 2001 to 2010. Without controlling for female directors’ attributes, we find that accounting-based performance measures (ROA and ROE) increase with female directorship, while the market-based performance measure (Tobin’s Q) decreases with female directorship. Using these results as a benchmark, we include different attributes of female directors in our regression model. We consider two categories of female directors’ attributes: monitoring attributes (Independence; membership of relevant board committees; board chair), and board capital attributes that contain demographic attributes (education; business education; foreign nationality) and board relational capital (tenure; multiple directorships; media coverage). After controlling for the attributes of female directors, the positive relationship between female directorship and the accounting-based performance measures (ROA and ROE) remains unchanged. However, the negative relationship between the percentage of women on the board and Tobin’s Q vanishes. This suggests that the higher monitoring perception of female directors is related solely to their attributes. However, the effect of female directors on the functioning of the board is explained not only by our large set of attributes. We argue that some features of female directors, not captured by our attributes, contribute to the improvement of the board’s decision-making process. Interestingly, the effects of different attributes on both types of performance (accounting and market-based) are not uniform. First, we find that female directors’ reputation is positively associated with all performance measures.