Maria Giuseppina Bruna

Board gender diversity and ESG disclosure: evidence from the USA

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between corporate debt-like compensation and the value of excess cash holdings.,The environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure score provided by Bloomberg is used as a proxy for the extent of corporate social responsibility (CSR). The empirical analysis is based on a sample of 379 firms that made up the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index over the period 2010-2015. In order to take into account the endogeneity problem between board gender diversity and ESG disclosure, a fixed effect model with lagged board variables is used.,Two main results arise from this study. First, no significant relationship is found between board gender diversity and ESG disclosure. Second, the evidence also partially confirms critical mass theory, as below three female directors the relationship between board gender diversity and ESG disclosure is not statistically significant. However, beyond that, no significant relationship was found.,Reasonable theoretical arguments drawn from stakeholder theory suggest that board gender diversity may have a positive effect on ESG disclosure. The empirical evidence presented neither supports, nor denies stakeholder theory. However, the results may be improved by enlarging the frontiers of this research in time and space, increasing the perimeter of qualitative data integrated in this investigation.,This paper offers theoretical and empirical arguments for the feminization of corporate boards, not only in the name of equality between women and men and organizational justice, but also in the light of organizational performance (examined through the prism of governance). Transparency, analyzed using the proxy of ESG disclosure, is strongly and positively correlated with a feminization of boards, if the proportion of women is significant and sufficient to be able to prevent and surpass the “invisibilization” phenomenon, which is based on the marginalization of passive ultra-minorities, reduction to silence, marginalization (disqualification of women voice or exit strategy), assimilation or the endorsement of stigma.,First, this makes a theoretical contribution to the diversity and governance literature by examining the effect of WOCB on ESG disclosure through the stakeholder theory (Freeman, 2010). Second, the authors contribute to the CSR literature (cf. Byron and Post, 2016) by documenting specifically the effect of board gender diversity on CSR disclosures through ESG. Indeed, ESG research mainly concentrates on firm financial performance (Galbreath, 2013). No study has examined the relationship between WOCB and ESG disclosure. Finally, from an empirical standpoint, an FE model with lagged board variables (Liu et al., 2014) is used to fully address the endogeneity problems in the relationship between WOCB and ESG disclosure that may occur because of differences in unobservable characteristics across firms or reverse causality (Boulouta, 2013).

Conducting a Diversity Policy as a Management Change Agent: A Key Issue to an Organisation’s Performance

The sociological and demographic reality of recent decades has meant that western companies have seen an evolution towards greater diversification among their staff members. The implementing of a diversity policy in a company cannot be reduced to a managerial fashion or fad, to professional rhetoric or to a set of superficial or illusory initiatives, but it can aim at social transformation. That is why, in this chapter, the authors have chosen to portray the deployment of such an approach from the standpoint of an organisation-changing process, which can, at the same time, alter the language, the standards and the practices of the organisation and led them at the end to identify three managerial levers capable of transforming team diversity into performance enhancers.

Point de vue : les nouveaux chantiers du management de la diversité: Quelques pistes de réflexion et de recherche

Par un chasse-croise d’apports theoriques transdisciplinaires et d’exemplifications issues du terrain, cet article prospectif esquisse deux chantiers de recherche sur le management de la diversite a investir dans les annees futures. Le premier chantier a trait au depassement du totemisme de la norme, un defi de civilisation et un enjeu strategique pour les organisations souhaitant optimiser leur capital humain. La difficile integration professionnelle des jeunes a faible capital scolaire initial, qui constituent pourtant des viviers de talents, en est l’illustration.Le second chantier concerne l’elargissement de la responsabilite des organisations et l’extension du perimetre effectif des demarches de diversite et d’inclusion. La question des salaries-aidants interpelle les capacites analytiques et prospectives des entreprises et deconstruit une conception reductionniste de l’homme-au-travail.