Board gender diversity, cultural logics, and corporate tax behaviour
Document Type
Article
Source of Publication
Journal of Business Research
Publication Date
10-8-2026
Abstract
Corporate tax aggressiveness tests corporate accountability, yet less is known about when board gender diversity translates into more restrained tax behaviour across institutional settings. Using 27,275 firm-year observations from 29 countries across Europe, Asia, and Australasia during 2013–2023, we examine whether board gender diversity is associated with lower tax aggressiveness and whether national culture conditions this association. Board gender diversity is negatively associated with tax aggressiveness: greater female board representation is associated with higher cash effective tax rates and more restrained tax behaviour. This association is stronger in high masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation settings, but weaker in high power distance, individualism, and indulgence settings. Results are robust to an alternative sign-reversed accrual-based tax proxy, lagged board gender diversity, placebo randomisation, entropy balancing, and two-step difference GMM. The findings contribute to business ethics, governance, and tax research by showing that culture shapes how female board representation translates into accountability-relevant tax outcomes.
DOI Link
ISSN
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Volume
219
Disciplines
Business
Keywords
Board gender diversity, Cultural context, Tax aggressiveness
Scopus ID
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Hussain, Atia; Ahmed, Ammad; and Ngoc Nguyen, Bao Thi, "Board gender diversity, cultural logics, and corporate tax behaviour" (2026). All Works. 8420.
https://zuscholars.zu.ac.ae/works/8420
Indexed in Scopus
yes
Open Access
yes
Open Access Type
Hybrid: This publication is openly available in a subscription-based journal/series