Board gender diversity and environmental, social, and economic value creation: Does family ownership matter?

ORCID Identifiers

0000-0003-2544-7741

Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Business Strategy and the Environment

Publication Date

3-1-2020

Abstract

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment Prior literature on firm value creation for stakeholders has oversimplified and narrowed the concept of value down to “economic returns.” Although economic returns are fundamental to a firm's core stakeholders (i.e., shareholders), other legitimate stakeholders want “value” beyond economic returns. We define stakeholder value as the financial and nonfinancial returns a firm can offer to its legitimate stakeholders, and empirically investigate whether board gender diversity (BGD) improves our multidimensional measure of value. Using Thomson Reuters' ASSET4 data for U.K.-listed firms available from Eikon for the period 2007–2017, we report a significant positive relationship between BGD and stakeholder value creation. In particular, BGD increases social and environmental value creation in addition to economic returns. Furthermore, our results suggest that even though gender-diverse boards are associated with stakeholder value creation in family firms, this is only conspicuous for environmental value creation. The findings suggest that although female directors cater to the interests of broader stakeholder groups, family ownership causes them to mainly focus on environmental stakeholders. The study provides important implications for regulators, stakeholders, and academic scholars.

ISSN

0964-4733

Publisher

John Wiley and Sons Ltd

Volume

29

Issue

3

First Page

1268

Last Page

1284

Disciplines

Business

Keywords

boardroom gender diversity, environmental performance, family ownership, stakeholder engagement, sustainable development

Scopus ID

85076377758

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

no

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