Sridhar Arcot

Female hospitality executives and their effects on firm performance.

While increased gender diversity at operational and managerial levels in the hotel industry can be observed, women represent only a small minority in top management positions and at the highest levels of executive leadership. This paper explores gender compositions in executive management teams of hotel firms and provides comprehensive longitudinal empirical data, which shows how increases of female hotel executive managers impact the financial performance of their hotel organizations. The authors determine the threshold needed for the female managers to exert influence in their hotel-executive management teams and explore the different percentage ranges of gender diversity and their impact on hotel performances below and above the threshold or critical mass point. The findings of this study have implications for hotel firms in terms of making more informed decisions on gender diversity-related program and affirmative action policies.

Corporate Governance and Ownership: Evidence from a Non-Mandatory Regulation

We study the governance choices of firms in a voluntary regulatory regime where we can directly observe the impact of ownership on corporate governance practices pertaining to the composition of the board of directors. We find that firms with a dominant shareholder are more likely to deviate from standards of best practice in corporate governance. However, lesser governance standards in firms where a dominant shareholder is present are not associated with lower performance. In contrast, governance practices and disclosures matter for performance in widely-held firms because they alleviate monitoring and free-rider problems. Our results suggest that the impact of corporate governance practices is the result of complex governance interdependences.We study the unique governance dynamics surrounding family ownership in a voluntary regulatory arena where we can directly observe the impact of firm ownership on corporate governance practices pertaining to the composition of the board of directors. We find that family firms are more likely to deviate from standards of best practice in corporate governance. However, lesser governance standards in family firms are not associated with lower performance because the family shareholder is the monitor in-place. In contrast, governance practices and disclosures matter in widely-held firms because they alleviate the conflicts between managers and dispersed shareholders. More broadly, our results show that family ownership and board governance practices are substitute governance mechanisms.