A Review of the Current Situation of Gender Diverse Corporate Boards and the Impact of More Diversity

This paper gives an overview over the number of women serving on corporate boards both in Iceland and abroad. Women hold only around 20% of boards seats and similar number of women is in top managements. It will analyse the development and find plausible explanations of the present situation and int...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Snorrason, Jón Snorri
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:Icelandic
Published: Stjórnsýslustofnun 2012
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ojs.hi.is/index.php/irpa/article/view/a.2012.8.1.4
Description
Summary:This paper gives an overview over the number of women serving on corporate boards both in Iceland and abroad. Women hold only around 20% of boards seats and similar number of women is in top managements. It will analyse the development and find plausible explanations of the present situation and introduce recent research papers in this field and explore the impact of more diversity and on firm performance. Are more gender diverse boards likely to perform better then firms lacking the diversity? Will diversity and increased number of women on boards have positive influence on the number of women in top management positions in the same firms? The evidence in the research papers is inconclusive of the effects of gender diversity on firm performance, but better performing firms tend to have more women on the board. We will see positive relation between corporate and board size and the representation of women the boards but find the inverse relation in Iceland. The requirements by law that a minimum fraction of the firm´s board members to be of a certain gender will call for a dramatic improvement on the current situation. Finally we explore the possibilities in the ways firms will increase the number of women on boards to meet the mandating gender diversity before the deadline set by the regulators. Í þessari yfirlitsgrein er farið yfir stöðu kvenna í stjórnum fyrirtækja, bæði hér á landi og erlendis. Aðeins rúm 20% stjórnarsæta eru skipuð konum og svipað hlutfall er í hópi æðstu stjórnenda. Farið verður yfir þróun þessara mála og reynt að leita skýringa á stöðunni og hvernig hún getur breyst. Kynntar verða helstu rannsóknir sem hafa kannað hver áhrifin eru af fjölgun kvenna í stjórnum fyrirtækja. Ýmsum spurningum er velt upp, svo sem hvort fjölbreyttar stjórnir séu líklegri til að skila meiri rekstrarárangri, hvort stjórnhættir breytist með fjölbreytni og loks hvort fjölgun kvenna í stjórnum fyrirtækja muni leiða til þess að konum fjölgi í stöðum æðstu stjórnenda. Það liggur fyrir að þau fyrirtæki sem hafa konur ...