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1 – 10 of 26Rita Goyal, Nada Kakabadse and Andrew Kakabadse
Boards presently are considered the most critical component in improving corporate governance (CG). Board diversity is increasingly being recommended as a tool for enhancing firm…
Abstract
Purpose
Boards presently are considered the most critical component in improving corporate governance (CG). Board diversity is increasingly being recommended as a tool for enhancing firm performance. Academic research and regulatory action regarding board diversity are focussed mainly on gender and ethnic composition of boards. However, the perspective of board members on board diversity and its impact is mostly missing. Moreover, while strategic leadership perspective suggests that a broader set of upper echelon’s characteristics may shape their actions, empirical evidence investigating the impact of less-explored attributes of diversity is almost non-existent. While the research on the input–output relationship between board diversity and firm performance remains equivocal, an intervening relationship between board diversity and board effectiveness needs to be understood. The purpose of this paper is to address all three limitations and explore the subject from board members’ perspective.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper presents the findings of qualitative, exploratory research conducted by interviewing 42 board members of FTSE 350 companies. The data are analysed thematically.
Findings
The findings of the research suggest that board members of FTSE 350 companies consider the diversity of functional experience to be a critical requirement for boards’ role-effectiveness. Functionally diverse boards manage external dependencies more effectively and challenge assumptions of the executive more efficiently, thus improving CG. The findings significantly contribute to the literature on board diversity, as well as to strategic leadership theory and other applicable theories. The research is conducted with a relatively small but elite and difficult to approach set of 42 board members of FTSE 350 companies.
Practical implications
The paper makes a unique and significant contribution to praxis by presenting the perspective of practitioners of CG – board members. The findings may encourage board nomination committees to seek board diversity beyond the gender and ethnic characteristics of directors. The findings may also be relevant for policy formulation, as they indicate that functionally diverse boards have improved effectiveness in a range of board roles.
Social implications
Board diversity is about building a board that accurately reflects the make-up of the population and stakeholders of the society where the company operates. The aim of board diversity is to cultivate a broad range of attributes and perspectives that reflects real-world demographics as boards need to continue to earn their “licence to operate in society” as organisations have a responsibility to multiple constituents and stakeholders, including the community and the wider society within which they exist. Building social capital through diversity has value in the wider context of modern society and achieving social justice.
Originality/value
The paper makes an original and unique contribution to strategic leadership theory by strengthening the argument of the theory. The paper explores beyond widely researched attributes of gender and ethnicity on boards and explores the impact of a less-researched characteristic of directors – their functional experience. Moreover, the paper opens the “black box” of CG – boards, and presents the perspectives of board members. The findings indicate that board members in FTSE 350 boards define diversity more broadly than academics and regulatory agencies often do.
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The argument that the board of directors can be a helpful tool for entrepreneurships and small businesses derives from the rationale for using boards from both a macro and a micro…
Abstract
The argument that the board of directors can be a helpful tool for entrepreneurships and small businesses derives from the rationale for using boards from both a macro and a micro perspective.Society depends on boards to provide overall checks and balances in the running of businesses.This could not be more evident from the role of the board in Enron’s collapse (U.S. Senate 2002).
The boardʼs value to the entrepreneur is found in the application of the micro perspective.Two sets of recommendations are developed to formulate an improved model of directorship actions and behaviors. First, duties and responsibilities of the board of directors are expanded to help guide entrepreneurs.Second, five unique behavior patterns are then proposed that can be particularly helpful in carrying out the duties and activities of the board for guiding entrepreneurial success.
Giuseppe Nicolò, Giovanni Zampone, Giuseppe Sannino and Serena De Iorio
Recent regulatory changes in Europe have promoted non-financial reporting practices (e.g., Directive, 2014/95/EU) and gender diversity in decision-making positions. Special…
Abstract
Purpose
Recent regulatory changes in Europe have promoted non-financial reporting practices (e.g., Directive, 2014/95/EU) and gender diversity in decision-making positions. Special attention is devoted to promoting the gender balance on corporate boards as a key mechanism to enhance corporate governance effectiveness and better address multiple stakeholders' needs. With this in mind, this study intends to examine the impact of boardroom gender diversity on Environmental Social Governance (ESG) disclosure practices in the European listed firms' context.
Design/methodology/approach
The study applies different panel data models on an extended sample of 1,392 firms from 21 European Union (EU) countries for six years (2014–2019).
Findings
Findings allow to spotlight the positive role exerted by the presence of women directors on the boards in enhancing ESG disclosure, both at the overall and specific (individual ESG scores) level.
Research limitations/implications
Policymakers and regulators might consider the study's evidence as a stimulus to continue in promoting strategic actions and reforms that foster gender equality and balance in corporate decision-making positions.
Practical implications
Creating a heterogeneous and diversified board of directors may support implementing a “sustainable corporate governance” recently claimed by the EC.
Originality/value
The study contributes to the literature by disentangling the links between gender diversity and ESG disclosure over a period that covers a long season of European regulations and measures that affected both non-financial reporting practices and the board of directors' composition. Accordingly, it can contribute to enhancing the practical and theoretical understanding of the pivotal role that gender diversity may exert in strengthening corporate governance and, in turn, corporate transparency and accountability behaviours about non-financial issues.
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Fredrik Bååthe, Mia von Knorring and Karin Isaksson-Rø
This study aims to deepen the understanding of how top managers reason about handling the relationships between quality of patient care, economy and professionals’ engagement.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to deepen the understanding of how top managers reason about handling the relationships between quality of patient care, economy and professionals’ engagement.
Design/methodology/approach
Qualitative design. Individual in-depth interviews with all members of the executive management team at an emergency hospital in Norway were analysed using reflexive thematic method.
Findings
The top managers had the intention to balance between quality of patient care, economy and professionals’ engagement. This became increasingly difficult in times of high internal or external pressures. Then top management acted as if economy was the most important focus.
Practical implications
For health-care top managers to lead the pursuit towards increased sustainability in health care, there is a need to balance between quality of patient care, economy and professionals’ engagement. This study shows that this balancing act is not an anomaly top-managers can eradicate. Instead, they need to recognize, accept and deliberately act with that in mind, which can create virtuous development spirals where managers and health-professional communicate and collaborate, benefitting quality of patient care, economy and professionals’ engagement. However, this study builds on a limited number of participants. More research is needed.
Originality/value
Sustainable health care needs to balance quality of patient care and economy while at the same time ensure professionals’ engagement. Even though this is a central leadership task for managers at all levels, there is limited knowledge about how top managers reason about this.
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Dagmar Daubner-Siva, Sierk Ybema, Claartje J. Vinkenburg and Nic Beech
The purpose of this paper is to provide an inside-out perspective on the practices and effects of talent management (TM) in a multinational organization.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide an inside-out perspective on the practices and effects of talent management (TM) in a multinational organization.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopts an autoethnographic approach focusing on the experiences of the first author during her employment in a multinational organization. This approach contributes to the literature by providing an insider talent perspective that thus far has not been presented in TM research.
Findings
Applying autoethnography as a means to address the inside-out perspective in TM reveals a tension. The authors label this phenomenon the “talent paradox,” defined as the mix of simultaneously occurring opportunities and risks for individuals identified and celebrated as a talent.
Originality/value
The paper may be of value to TM scholars and practitioners, as well as to employees who have been identified as high potentials or talents in their organizations. In contrast with the TM literature’s optimism, the findings illuminate that being identified as a talent may paradoxically produce both empowerment and powerlessness. Attending to personal aspects of TM processes is relevant for organizations as well as for individuals as it enables reflection and sensemaking.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore the emergence of sustainability governance through the unfolding hybridisation process between corporate governance and corporate social…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the emergence of sustainability governance through the unfolding hybridisation process between corporate governance and corporate social responsibility and the implications of this for understanding patterns in sustainability reporting over time.
Design/methodology/approach
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill incident is an extreme case study undertaken to examine its implications on the organisational legitimacy of British Petroleum (BP) and the latter’s response to the incident and beyond. The paper draws on Suchman’s legitimacy framework (1995) to understand sustainability governance as an organisational practice that evolved post the Gulf of Mexico oil spill to manage BP’s legitimacy. It draws on archival records and documentation from 2008 to 2017, as key sources for data collection, using interrogation by NVivo software.
Findings
Sustainability governance is a sound practice that was socially constructed to manage the re-legitimatisation process following the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. It is characterised by broadness (the interplay between the corporate governance and corporate social responsibility disciplines), dynamic (developing the tactics to repair and maintain legitimacy), agility (conforming to the accountability for socially responsible investment and ensuring steps towards geopolitically responsible investment) and interdependence (reflecting composition and interactions).
Practical implications
This paper has practical implications for organisations, in terms of sustainability governance’s constitution, mechanism and characteristics.
Social implications
This paper has implications not only for organisations, in terms of sustainability governance’s characteristics, but also for policy-makers, regulators and accounting education. However, the present paper’s insights are achieved through an in-depth and longitudinal case study.
Originality/value
This paper has problematized the concept of sustainability governance and elaborated its evolution (the emergence, enactment, deployment and interplay) process. The sustainability governance showed an otherwise organisational response that moves our understanding of the deployment of disclosure for complex organisational change as a way to discredit events.
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Giovanni Zampone, Giuseppe Nicolò, Giuseppe Sannino and Serena De Iorio
The study examines the association between board gender diversity and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) disclosure from an international and longitudinal perspective. It also…
Abstract
Purpose
The study examines the association between board gender diversity and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) disclosure from an international and longitudinal perspective. It also investigates the role of the Sustainability Committee (SC) as a possible factor that can mediate the relationship between board gender diversity and SDG disclosure.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors focused on the annual Communication on Progress (CoP) prepared annually by a sample of 526 companies from 39 countries and ten industry sectors along the 2017–2020 period to evaluate the SDG disclosure. Baron and Kenny's (1986) three-step model is estimated to test the impact of the presence of an SC on the SDG disclosure level and the mediating effect exerted by the SC on the relationship between board gender diversity and SDG disclosure.
Findings
Findings shed light on the usefulness of the CoP as an alternative reporting tool to communicate progress against SDGs achievement, especially regarding SDGs 13 and 8. This study evidences that board gender diversity positively influences SDG disclosure. The relationship between board gender diversity and SDG disclosure is not only direct but also mediated by the presence of an SC.
Research limitations/implications
Companies need to consider the role of women in enhancing the effectiveness of their governance mechanisms and their ability to meet stakeholder information needs. Establishing a specific SC represents a valid mechanism that ensures greater transparency about corporate actions tackled to contribute toward SDGs and enhances the relationship between board gender diversity and SDG disclosure among International companies.
Practical implications
The study's findings offer stimuli for policy-makers and regulators to reflect on the relevance of the CoP as a possible alternative communication tool to provide SDGs information and overcome the limitations of the Sustainability Reports.
Originality/value
This is the first study that examines companies' SDG disclosure practices focusing on CoPs. Further, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that tests the relationship between gender diversity and SDG disclosure, considering the mediating effect of an SC committee.
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