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The marginalization of women on boards is a heavily discussed topic across the world, especially in Ghana. Apart from estimating the link between boardroom gender diversity and technical efficiency of banks, this study aims to test the presence of upper echelons theory in the Ghanaian banking sector.

The study examines data from 2000 to 2019 annual reports of 23 banks in Ghana. The stochastic frontier analysis is used to estimate the impact of boardroom gender diversity on technical efficiency of banks in Ghana.

This study finds that greater boardroom gender diversity generates technical efficiencies for banks. The results remain unchanged after accounting for bank types (listed and non-listed). Thus, all banks benefit in terms of technical efficiency from more boardroom gender diversity. The upper echelons theory is validated in the Ghanaian banking context. Overall, the study supports pro-gender diversity on boards.

The results have implications at corporate, social and national levels. It supports the need for policies that improve greater boardroom gender diversity.

This study adds to a growing number of non-developed countries by investigating the link between the boardroom gender diversity and technical efficiency of banks in Ghana, a country which historically has had minimal female participation in the workforce. New insight is, therefore, offered into this relationship by using data which examines the technical efficiency of banks periods before and after the Women in Finance Charter in 2016.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between board diversity measured as relation-oriented, task-oriented and board overall diversity and firm’s investment efficiency.

This study estimates four dimensions of board diversity, including age, gender, tenure and education. The four dimensions are further categorized in relation-oriented diversity (i.e. age and gender), task-oriented diversity (i.e. tenure and education) and overall board diversity (relation and task oriented). Panel data analysis is used to examine the board diversity–investment efficiency relationship in Chinese listed firms during the years 2003–2018. The findings of the study are robust to a battery of econometric techniques.

This study finds relation-oriented, task-oriented and overall diversity of a board curb investment inefficiency by discouraging sub-optimal investment (over- or under-investment). In other words, board diversity improves firms’ investment efficiency.

The results suggest that board diversity plays a significant role in corporate decisions. The findings illustrate that board diversity disciplines the management, reduces agency conflicts and thereby improves corporate governance, resulting in higher investment efficiency.

This study has two important contributions. First, this study extends the prior literature of investment efficiency by considering socio-psychological dimension of the board diversity by constructing relation- and task-oriented diversity. Second, contrary to earlier studies on board diversity, this study takes four facets of board diversity, i.e. age, gender, education and tenure that improve corporate governance mechanism.

This paper aims to examine how the diversity of educational levels within bank boards influences the efficiency and stability of banks operating in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Unlike previous studies, this analysis also investigates the role of board gender diversity in moderating the relationship between board educational level diversity and bank efficiency and financial stability in MENA.

In this study, a sample of 77 banks in the MENA region spanning the years 2011 to 2018 is used. The relationship between the presence of highly educated directors on the board, bank efficiency and stability is assessed using the ordinary least squares method. Additionally, the authors use the Generalized Method of Moments technique to correct endogeneity problem.

This study establishes a positive association between the presence of directors with advanced educational backgrounds on bank boards and bank efficiency and stability. Furthermore, the inclusion of women on the board strengthens this relationship.

These findings have important implications for policymakers and regulators in the MENA region, suggesting that promoting diversity policies that encourage the participation of highly educated directors on bank boards can contribute to enhanced efficiency and financial stability. Policymakers may also consider implementing quotas or guidelines to improve gender diversity in board appointments, thereby fostering bank performance in the region.

This study stands out for its innovation and distinctiveness, as it delves into the connection between board educational level diversity and bank efficiency in the MENA region. Notably, it surpasses previous research by investigating the moderating role of board gender diversity, thus offering valuable insights into the complex interplay between these two facets of board diversity. This contribution enriches the existing literature by providing novel perspectives on board composition dynamics and its influence on bank efficiency and stability.

This study aims to analyze the efficiency of banks under board gender diversity and to examine the determinants of bank efficiency.

Data for analysis were sourced from annual reports of 21 banks for the period from 2009 to 2017. A two-step framework was used: first, an examination of efficiency scores with and without board gender diversity computed using data envelopment analysis; and second, a regression of board gender diversity as a determinant of bank efficiency using panel estimation on an unbalanced panel data.

The results reveal that gender diversity promotes bank efficiency up to a maximum of two female directors on a nine-member board of directors, suggesting a threshold effect on bank efficiency. Board size improves bank efficiency. Board independence is negatively related to bank efficiency. Also, powerful chief executive officers are detrimental for bank efficiency. Finally, the authors find that ownership structure, bank size, bank age and loan-to-deposit ratio are important factors affecting bank efficiency.

All bank-year observations with no female representation on the board were excluded. As such, this paper is limited to 21 banks. Future research should look at a larger data set and account for dynamic endogeneity.

The paper contributes to bank governance structure, namely, gender composition of boards, and provides an insight for regulators and shareholders to estimate the role of men and women on boards.

The novel feature of the efficiency model used is that it incorporates board gender diversity as an additional input variable, in line with the preposition of proponent of resource dependency theory.

This study aims to explore the effects of expertise diversity on project efficiency and creativity in health-care project teams.

This study analyzes hierarchical linear models using multi-source data from 50 project teams in a large health-care organization in the USA. This data set includes self-reported survey responses from 274 team members and human resource information for all 515 members across the 50 teams. Expertise diversity is operationalized by professional diversity and positional diversity reflecting two dimensions, domain and level, of the concept of expertise.

This study reveals that professional diversity is negatively related to project efficiency and project creativity, whereas positional diversity is positively related to project efficiency.

Successfully managing a project team of experts within a limited time frame is a challenge for organizations. This study advances the understanding of the double-edged sword effect of expertise diversity on project teams, focusing on professional and positional diversity. It provides important insights for human resource development in terms of the composition of project teams regarding members’ expertise.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how multiple facets of board diversity influence technical efficiency (TE) and total factor productivity (TFP).

The authors measure board diversity in two dimensions: relation-related dimension (age and gender) and task-related dimension (tenure, education and expertise). The authors use a balanced panel data of 806 nonfinancial Chinese firms over the period 2009–2017. The authors use a two-stage approach for analysis. In the first stage, the authors use a non-parametric frontier approach to calculate the TE and factor productivity scores. In the second stage, the authors regressed these scores on board diversity attributes (relation-related diversity and task-related diversity).

By using tobit regression and two-step system GMM, the authors find that board diversity improves TE and TFP. The authors’ analyses illustrate that a higher diversity on corporate board (in terms of age, gender, tenure, education and expertise) positively influence firm efficiency.

The findings have important implications for policymakers. The findings suggest that regulators should devise policies to encourage board diversity. Because a diverse board can bring knowledge, skills, abilities, expertise and experience of diverse group members, which will ultimately enhance a firm’s efficiency. Especially, in the emerging markets (such as China), there is still a need for standard governance mechanisms; therefore, the authors suggest that policymakers should develop regulations and promote diversity of directors as one of the factors for improving the governance mechanisms, which will ultimately improve firms productivity.

Prior studies mostly considered only one dimension (such as gender) of diversity and, therefore, have overlooked how other dimensions influence firms. The authors consider several dimensions of diversity and quantify them into relation-related (age and gender) and task-related (tenure, education and expertise) attributes and show how they influence firms’ efficiency. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to comprehensively investigate how several facets of diversity influence a firm’s TE and TFP.

The purpose of this paper is to answer the question of workforce diversity and efficiency. It departs from the rather ad hoc approach used in most recent empirical papers exploiting firm-level evidence, and suggests focusing on the estimation of the degree of concavity of the production function.

Workforce diversity is optimal when the technology displays concavity in the share of workers considered (e.g. decreasing marginal contribution of rising shares of more productive/skilled workers). What is also shown in this paper is that a generalised version of the production function à-la-Hellerstein-Neumark (HN) – where workforce diversity is captured via an index of labour shares – is suitable for estimating the concavity of the technology, and thus for assessing the case for/against workforce diversity.

The paper contains an application to two panels of Belgian firms covering the 1998-2012 period. The main empirical result is that of an absence of strong evidence that age, gender or educational diversity is good or bad for efficiency.

The key idea of the paper is that the degree of convacity/convexity in the share of workers considered of firm-level technology and the desirability/efficiency of workforce diversity are intrinsically connected. It is also that a non-linear/CES version of the HN labour-quality index can be used in empirical work to assess the degree of concavity/convexity of the technology and quantify the efficiency gains/losses of workforce diversity.

Internal capital markets of diversified firms have been associated with inefficient allocation of investment funds across divisions, leading to value losses. Utilizing a sample of diversified firms that adopted or eliminated Residual Income (RI) plans between 1990 and 2009, we show that adoptions of these plans mitigate investment distortions and lead to value gains. Following the adoption of RI plans, diversified firms start allocating investment funds based on growth opportunities of their divisions. RI plan adopters lower their divisional investment levels, especially in segments with below-average growth opportunities. The overall investment allocation efficiency improves, and the diversification discount diminishes after the adoption of RI plans. However, RI plans appear to be used only as temporary tools for assessing corporate performance. The plans are adopted primarily by firms expected to immediately generate plan bonuses for management, and they are frequently eliminated by firms with bad accounting performance and low managerial bonuses. The study contributes to the literature on organizational efficiency, internal capital markets, and on the importance of measures based on economic profits or RI.

The purpose of this paper is to present a case study in which data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to evaluate and classify the suppliers of a Colombian motorcycle assembly company. This tool allows the integration of several attributes into single performance measures (cross-efficiency and diversity efficiency) and subsequent classification based on the values obtained for these two metrics.

The classification uses a methodology based on two main tools. The first is an input-oriented cross-efficiency DEA model with ordinal variables to evaluate the suppliers’ performance, and the second is a classification of these into categories that identifies those with good performance for features that make them outstanding.

The assembly company segments its suppliers according to supply frequency. The results show that suppliers working under a just-in-time system achieve superior performance with respect to other suppliers.

The application of this methodology in a real-world case illustrates how DEA can be a useful tool to support the evaluation and classification of suppliers (a process of increasing complexity given the current trend to include multiple strategic measures together with classical operational measures). Moreover, the methodology illustrated in the study can be adapted to other similar settings.

The main contributions of this paper are twofold. First, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to illustrate the use of DEA in a real case related to supplier evaluation. Second, the presence of ordinal variables (e.g. quality or environmental ratings) gives rise to DEA variants seldom used in this context.

Este artículo presenta un caso de estudio en el que se utiliza análisis envolvente de datos (DEA) para evaluar y clasificar los proveedores de una ensambladora colombiana de motocicletas. Dicha herramienta permite integrar múltiples atributos en dos medidas de desempeño (eficiencia cruzada y de diversidad) y la posterior clasificación de éstos con base en los valores obtenidos para ambas medidas.

La clasificación usa una metodología basada en dos herramientas. La primera es un modelo DEA de eficiencia cruzada orientado a las entradas con variables ordinales que se usa para evaluar el desempeño de los proveedores. La segunda es una clasificación de los proveedores en categorías para identificar aquellos con buen desempeño en algunas características que los hacen sobresalientes.

La compañía segmenta sus proveedores de acuerdo con la frecuencia de abastecimiento. Los resultados muestran que los proveedores que operan bajo justo a tiempo (Just-in-time, JIT) tienen un desempeño superior con respecto a los demás proveedores.

La aplicación de esta metodología en un caso real ilustra como DEA es una herramienta útil para apoyar la evaluación y clasificación de proveedores (un proceso de complejidad creciente gracias a la tendencia actual de incluir medidas estratégicas junto a las medidas operacionales comúnmente utilizadas). Además, la metodología utilizada puede adaptarse fácilmente a otras situaciones similares.

Las contribuciones de este artículo son dos. Primero, hasta donde sabemos, este es el primer estudio que ilustra el uso de DEA en un caso real de evaluación de proveedores. Segundo, la presencia de variables ordinales (por ejemplo, evaluaciones de calidad y medioambiente) resultan en modelos DEA que son poco utilizados en este contexto.

The purpose of this study is to explore the link between aggregate production efficiency and the extent of linguistic clustering in Indonesia.

The author draws on the stochastic frontier model and applies it to the data on Indonesian provinces to compute the effects of various determinants on these provinces' aggregate production efficiency. The key determinant is the spatial index of linguistic clustering that the author believes has never been applied before in this context.

Linguistic clustering is an important determinant of aggregate production efficiency. Linguistic diversity is positively associated with productive efficiency if members of a specific linguistic group are not clustered beyond a certain level.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that links the spatial index of linguistic clustering (because of Massey and Danton) to production efficiency. In other words, the contribution of this study is to introduce a geographical dimension to the mainstream analysis of the association between ethnic diversity and economic performance.