The relationship between women on corporate Boards of Directors and company positive financial results is mixed, according to Syracuse University’s Kris Byron and Corinne Post of Lehigh University.

They conducted a meta-analysis of 140 existing studies and found that women on corporate boards was related to positive financial outcomes in countries with stronger shareholder protections.

Companies with women on Boards and subject to rigorous shareholder protections reported higher accounting returns or firm profitability, noted University of Mississippi’s Richard Gentry and Wei Shen of Arizona State University.

Women on Boards of Directors provide “diversity of thought and experience” and tolerate less financial risk.
As a result, they made stronger efforts to monitor the firms and to ensure strategy execution, leading to superior financial results,according to Byron and Post.

The team drew on Agency Theory, proposed by Stanford’s Kathleen Eisenhardt, suggesting that Boards of Directors are “information systems” used by key stakeholders to verify organizational behavior.

Directors’ individual cognitive frames, derived from their diverse values and experiences, influence these systems, according to  Arizona State’s Amy Hillman and Thomas Dalziel of University of Cincinnati.

However, diverse cognitive frames yield more favorable organizational outcomes only when teams “engage in mutual and collective interaction [and] share information, resources, and decisions.”

This means that women Board members affect group decision-making and financial performance when other Board members are willing to consider their diverse perspectives and experiences.

Strong shareholder protections provide “an information-processing stimulus that motivates (Boards) to leverage the decision-making resources (i.e., knowledge, experience and values) that women bring,” asserted Byron and Post.
They concluded that strong financial outcomes occur in companies with women on their Boards of Directors in countries with strong shareholder protections.

Byron and Post’s analysis illustrates that diverse perspectives provide benefit only when they are solicited and considered in a context of regulatory oversight.

-*When have you observed diverse perspectives associated with increased profitability and performance?

RELATED POSTS:

• Women Hedge Fund Managers Outperform Male Counterparts
• Startup Success Correlates with Women Executive Involvement
• Large-Cap Companies with Women Board Members Outperformed Peers
• Executives’ Financial Risk Tolerance Related to Marital Status
• Useful Fiction: Optimism Bias of Positive Illusions
• Emotional Awareness Enables Focus, Risk-taking Even When “Stressed”
• Genes and Neurotransmitters Influence Investment Risk-Taking: Implications for Taking Career Risks?
• Gender Differences and Diversity in Corporate Interaction Styles

©Kathryn Welds