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This paper aims to examine the barriers that act as a hindrance and are the reason behind the struggles for the successful practice of diversity and inclusion. It also provides suggestions that organisations across the Asian region can adopt to have a conducive work environment to flourish diversity and inclusion.

Qualitative data were collected from 21 in-depth semi-structured interviews, where the male and female interviewee ratio was 6:4. The interviewees were diversity and inclusion leaders, diversity and inclusion consultants and human resources (HR) experts from Asian countries such as India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, UAE, Singapore, Bangladesh and Nepal. The interviewees belonged to varied industries, including information technology, automobile, manufacturing, engineering, logistics and independent consultants. Every interview recorded was transcribed, and an inductive content analysis technique was used using NVivo. Broad themes and several antecedents were identified which hinder the successful practice of diversity and inclusion.

There exists a patriarchal mindset in society as the main reason; that is why Asian countries are finding it difficult and are struggling to embrace diversity and inclusion successfully. There is a lack of awareness amongst managers about how inclusive gender diversity impacts the company’s financial status. Reports show that companies that have female board members have better profit margins in comparison to those that do not.

This study was conducted within one industry setting, the service sector; therefore, the findings may not apply to other industries because of the different organisational cultures and HR policies.

This study offers managerial implications that can help the organisation foster and embrace diversity and inclusion by overcoming the barriers.

There should be fair and equitable inclusivity of females in the workplace. Female employees should be heard without biases and discrimination and allowed to speak up with equity. Females should not be seen differently during organisational decision-making, participation and empowerment.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the few to explore the challenges faced by Asian region organisations to embrace diversity and inclusion by empirical evidence. The study shows how the Asian region struggles to go beyond gender diversity and move away from patriarchal hegemony, which is the study’s unique contribution.

Do women contribute to performance of companies on which they serve as board of directors? Many prior studies examine this issue, but no consensus is reached on the benefits of women taking on leadership positions. The present study considers this thorny issue from a slightly different perspective. Does the association between gender diversity and business performance vary across sectors and economic cycles?

The sample for this study was derived from the firms included in the S&P Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) 300 Index, and the study period of 2004–2016 allowed authors to consider the effects of different sectors as well as different economic cycles on the relationship between gender diversity of boards and business performance. The authors consider the Australian context, which is somewhat unique from the other Western countries, as quotas on boards of directors are not made mandatory and the corporate governance practices are principle-based rather than rule-based.

Employing panel data models, at the aggregate level, the authors find no evidence of board gender diversity impacting business performance. Consideration of sectoral differences and economic cycles in the empirical analyses yielded additional insights. In particular, gender diversity has a beneficial association with performance for businesses in the services and financial sectors after the changes to corporate governance guidelines relating to diversity in 2010. These economic benefits, however, are not evidenced in the resources sector.

These findings offer support for critical mass and resource dependence theories.

The findings of this study have implications for inclusion and diversity policies of businesses and the society. Specifically, the findings offer support for gender diversity of corporate boards of directors.

This study highlights that women bring their unique skills and experiences to create economic value in sectors where they traditionally have more experience and opportunities.

Gender diversity, or in-diversity, has long been a problem in the tech industry. Until now, significant gaps and barriers still exist. This paper examines how recruitment practices within the technology sector can contribute to gender inequality and how recruitment practices can be improved to support a gender-diverse organization.

This paper adopted library research and case study as papers' methodologies.

There are many benefits of gender diversity, including better performance, better financial returns, and lower volatility. However, most tech companies do not make diversity a priority, and usually display conscious or unconscious gender biases. Some of the recommendations to overcome this diversity issue are to make diversity a goal, offer unconscious bias training, and expand recruitment efforts.

The findings imply that companies not pursuing a diverse workforce are in danger of experiencing lags in innovation and could be left behind. The findings also show that a technology company can increase the diversity of the company's workforce by applying practices that have already proven to be successful.

This paper confirms that gender parity is not just a social mission nor is gender parity solely a public relations initiative to improve a company's image. Technology companies must be continually innovating to thrive in companies' highly competitive and rapidly changing industry.

This study elaborates on the process through which gender-diverse boards of directors increase representation of females in management positions. This study draws on the gender spillover effect to examine whether gender diversity on boards of directors significantly influences the number of women promoted to managerial positions. The authors also employ implicit quota theory to examine the interaction effects of female board directors and their related strategies to target female customers as a source of female talent on the promotion numbers of female managers.

The authors draw from female manager panel data surveyed and gathered by the Korean Women Development Institute (KWDI), a Korean government-sponsored research institution, for the period 2008–2014. The total sample, comprising 5 biannual waves, includes 906 Korean companies across four wage rates. The authors apply zero-inflated negative binomial regression analyses to examine the effects of gender diversity on board director positions and its interactions with strategies targeting female markets on the number of female managerial promotions.

The authors find that gender diversity on boards of directors is positively related to the number of female managers promoted. Furthermore, in corporations where gender is not relevant to firms' strategy and decision-making, broader gender diversity increases the number of female managers promoted at lower- but not higher-level positions.

The current study demonstrates the complex role of gender diversity in board director positions in initiating and promoting the career development of female managers. On the one hand, gender diversity in board director positions has spillover effects on women's representation in management positions. On the other hand, female board directors impede the career progress of senior female managers to maintain their status in quotas when the female market is not critical to firms' competitiveness. Therefore, it is crucial to integrate two different concepts about gender diversity—the gender spillover effect and implicit quota theory—that elaborate on the effects of gender diversity in board director positions on female manager promotion numbers.

This study moves beyond existing research on gender diversity to define a new construct – gender power. The study examines gender power within the top management team (TMT) and its relationship to firm performance and firm risk.

The study utilizes a cross-disciplinary combination of upper echelons theory and finance theory as a framework to further examine the impact of gender power within the TMT and its impact on firm risk and firm performance. Employing data collected for 2,570 American publicly traded small-, medium- and large-cap firms over a 20-year period, panel regression analyses were conducted for measures of firm risk and firm performance, beta and return on assets (ROA), respectively.

This study shows that gender diversity and gender power are two distinct constructs with different effects. The findings from this study suggest that gender power may be a stronger predictor of the relationship between firm performance and firm risk than simply gender diversity alone.

This study was conducted based on a sample of publicly traded firms. These relationships may not be generalizable to firms in other contexts. Further, other variables representing firm performance and firm risk may add to this research.

Understanding the differences between gender diversity and gender power may allow firms to make more informed decisions when adding female executives to their TMTs.

This study proposes an objective representational indicator of structural power to measure the relative power of female executives of public companies that allows the expansion of existing research examining the distinction between gender diversity and gender power and their relationship to firm risk and firm performance.

To increase the share of women in the top management of companies, legal gender quotas are increasingly being introduced worldwide. Their effect, however, especially on perceived diversity and employer attractiveness, remains unknown. The purpose of this study is to investigate how a gender quota for a company’s executive board affects potential employees’ evaluation of that company as an employer. Drawing on signaling theory and the rationale of diversity attraction, the authors assumed that both the gender composition of a company’s board and the presence of a quota send signals regarding specific factors associated with diversity (i.e. perceived diversity climate, perceived internal motive for gender diversification and perceived competencies of board members). The authors postulated that these signals are perceived by job applicants and used to evaluate the attractiveness of the company as an employer.

In a scenario study, the authors manipulated the composition of the management board. That is, participants were presented an executive board that was either homogeneously male (Group 1) or had a female representation of 30% (Groups 2 and 3) or 50% (Group 4). The executive board in Groups 3 and 4 was subject to a statutory gender quota of 30%.

The results showed that a company with a gender-diverse board was perceived as more attractive by potential applicants than an all-male board. Also, a gender quota did not reduce a company’s employer attractiveness. The results suggest that potential applicants attach importance to board diversity but place less value on the causes that led to it.

Against the backdrop of the war for talent, this study contributes to a better understanding of the impact of gender quotas and factors influencing employer attractiveness. The study showed that when a gender quota is in place, applicants assume to a lesser extent that a company staffs its gender-diverse board of directors out of an inner conviction. Nonetheless, the presence of a gender quota does not significantly reduce the perceived diversity climate, nor does a quota have a negative impact on the employer attractiveness. Thus, using a quota as a means to increase gender diversity does not harm the ends.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of the gender diversity of top management teams (TMTs) on the financial performance (FP) of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam. This paper also examines the moderating effect of family control on this relationship.

Using a sample of SMEs in Vietnam, this paper uses descriptive statistics and balance panel regression with random effect to analyse 5,160 firm-year observations of family- and non-family-owned SMEs between 2011 and 2015.

The findings demonstrate that gender diversity in TMTs shows a negative relationship with the FP of family-controlled SMEs and no significant impact on FP of non-family SMEs. This study also illustrates a positive curvilinear relationship between the female manager rate in TMTs and firms’ FP in family SMEs.

This research study is limited to data from Vietnamese SMEs. Future studies could investigate these relationships with larger firms and in a broader geographical context.

This study provides a better understanding of the impact of TMT gender diversity on FP in Vietnamese SMEs while considering the moderating effect of family control. The findings support some theories relating to managerial gender diversity and the effect of family control on this diversity in family SMEs.

This study aims to explore the factors moderating possibly indirect relationships between gender diversity and its effect on bank performance. The causality of this relationship remains unclear.

The sample consists of all banks (n = 27) operating in Serbia.

The gender diversity-performance relationship is indirect. The gender diversity of executive boards positively impacts bank performance, over a threshold level. This is observed only in banks where gender diversity is extended to more than one level of executive authority.

Gender diversity should be fostered, particularly in small and competitive markets. The gender diversity-performance link is based on gender-related social interactions, which are interdependent and should not be taken into account as isolated factors.

To the knowledge, this is the first study to provide insight into indirect, gender related, moderatory interactions effecting gender diversity – performance link, in banking.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the gender and ethnic diversity–performance relationship in Malaysia from two angles: (1) the impact of political regimes; and (2) a possible nonlinear relationship – at the boardroom and employee level.

This study uses a sample of firms listed in Bursa Malaysia during a sample period that spans two political regimes. Two-stage least squares controlling for firm-specific effects, corporate governance and lagged variables to account for endogeneity issues is used to test the relationship.

Findings show that the political alignment of the ruling government affects the significance of the gender/ethnic diversity–performance relationship. The relationship between board gender/ethnic diversity and firm performance is curvilinear while the relationship between employee gender/ethnic diversity is linear and positive.

First, promoting gender/ethnic diversity not only requires strong policy but also political will to lead by example. Political regimes that provide lip-service without effective implementation threaten to derail any efforts in furthering the diversity agenda. Second, the presumption of a linear diversity–performance relationship is fallacious. Further studies, especially in pluralistic societies, must not discount the subtleties of intergroup conflicts. Third, in light of allegations of prejudicial hiring policies, Malaysian firms should embrace diversity, not only in the boardroom, but also among its workforce as employee diversity improves firm performance.

Prior studies on gender/ethnic diversity in Malaysia have returned mixed results but thus far, there has been no satisfactory explanation for this phenomenon. This study attributes it to lack of political will and cultural subgroup conflicts – two pertinent issues that were never considered in the literature. Prior studies have also exclusively focused on boardroom diversity. This study goes further by examining employee diversity – particularly important since most empowerment and diversity initiatives are targeted at lower level employees. This study is also the first to provide an objective benchmark for gender diversity (30–35% female directors) and ethnic diversity (less than 40% from one ethnicity) to achieve optimal performance.

This paper aims to uncover the global trend on the relationship between board gender diversity and firm risk. In addition, this paper investigates how country characteristics affect the relationship between board gender diversity and firm risk.

This study uses a large sample of firms in 45 countries for the period from 2002 to 2018. Ordinary least square regression is used as a baseline methodology, along with firm fixed effects. Difference-in-differences regression, two-stage least squares regression (instrumental variables approach) and change-on-change regression are adopted to better mitigate endogeneity.

This study finds that board gender diversity is associated with lower firm risk worldwide. In addition, the negative effect of board gender diversity on firm risk is more pronounced for firms that can more easily attract female directors, and for countries with lower power distance and greater preference for individualism.

The findings offer insights into the intense debate in recent years among academics and practitioners on the effect of board gender diversity on firm outcomes. Shareholders and directors may take the findings into account when they consider appointing female directors. The findings should be of interest to policymakers in countries that have not yet promoted board gender diversity.

By using an international sample with board gender quotas in different countries, this paper provides novel and persuasive evidence regarding the impact of board gender diversity on firm risk. This paper also adds to the literature by showing that the relationship between board gender diversity on firm risk is influenced by country characteristics.