Social movement spillover: Barriers to board gender diversity posed by contemporary governance reform

Women on boards, firms’ competitive advantage and its effect on ESG disclosure in Malaysia

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of women on board moderated by firms’ competitive advantage on firms’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosures.

Design/methodology/approach

The sample consists of 332 firm-year observations from the year 2012 to 2017 of 65 firms listed in Bursa Malaysia. To improve the robustness of this analysis, the authors adopt clustering techniques in the regression analysis. Sensitivity analysis is also conducted using two-stage least square regression and robust standard errors for panel regression with a cross-sectional dependence approach.

Findings

The findings of this research indicate that women on board encourage ESG and environmental disclosures. Nonetheless, in competitively advantaged firms, the authors find that the interaction between WOMENPER and COMADVANTAGE is negatively influencing ESG scores. However, no evidence is found to indicate that women on board in a competitively advantaged firm have an effect on the environmental scores of a firm.

Research limitations/implications

The findings urge regulators to ensure the appointment of qualified and competent women on board, particularly in competitively advantage firms.

Practical implications

Though firms with more women on board are associated with better ESG disclosures and environmental disclosures, the author’s additional analysis found that this is less pronounced in competitively advantage firms. Since a number of the competitive firms are owned by family firms as well as government-linked firms, the appointment of women should not be based on directors’ affiliation, network and family relationships.

Originality/value

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is one of the few studies which seek to investigate women’s appointment in competitive advantage firms.

Women’s Promotion to Management and Unfairness Perceptions—A Challenge to the Social Sustainability of the Organizations and Beyond

Inequality between women and men in top management positions is still a current reality where women are underrepresented. Gender discrimination against women in managerial positions violates the Sustainable Development Goal of gender equality. Gender discrimination affects women but also has negative consequences for employee output. Our aim is analyzing how the role of gender moderates the relationship between gender barriers to managerial positions and performance, mediated by organizational justice and commitment, and whether this relationship is stronger in women than in men. This study was carried out with 1278 employees (45.2% women and 54.8% men) of a Spanish financial group consisting of three different organizations. We performed a moderated mediation path analysis with Mplus. Results show that some gender barriers are associated with lower perceptions of organizational justice, which in turn are associated with lower organizational commitment, thus reducing performance. Moreover, this relationship is significant in men and women for work–family balance and barriers to accessing influential networks, but for unfair HR policies and practices, it is only significant in women. Removing gender barriers and unfairness perceptions is the goal that will contribute to organizational sustainability from the gender perspective.