Female presence and involvement on boards improves firm performance, transforms corporate governance and leads to the transition towards more responsible business.
Corporate boards are essential bodies for governance and management and their efficiency determines a company’s performance. The board is a crucial element of the corporate governance structure and its efficiency and performance determines the success of the operation and monitoring of the company. The board is viewed as the liaison between providers of capital (shareholders) and managers who use this capital to create value. The board role is to represent, formulate and fulfill the interests and expectations of shareholders as the owners of the companies. The discussion surrounding female participation in business inevitably needs to refer to their presence on corporate boards. It is also a reliable indicator of a gender equality policy and advancement, adopted by countries and companies.
The book traces the logic behind the decision patterns of female involvement in governance and management. In particular, it identifies the patterns of women’s presence on corporate boards, with respect to theoretical and conceptual argumentation, policy and regulatory implication, as well as practical adaptation. The phenomenon of women on corporate boards is analyzed in the context of different political, cultural and institutional environments addressing challenges in both developed and emerging economies. The role of female directors is viewed as one of the crucial aspects in corporate governance, adding to the quality of control and management.
Part I Overview; Introduction (Maria Aluchna and Guler Aras); Part II Concepts and Models; Chapter 1 Women on Corporate Boards: Backgrounds, Drivers and Mechanisms (Maria Aluchna and Tomasz Szapiro); Chapter 2 Gender Diversity on Boards in Norway and the UK: A Different Approach to Governance or a Case of Path Dependency? (Rita Goyal, Nada Korac Kakabadse, Filipe Morais and Andrew P. Kakabadse); Chapter 3 Regulation of the Gender Composition of Company Boards in Europe: Experience and Prospects (Kevin Campbell and Leszek Bohdanowicz); Part III Regulation and Compliance; Chapter 4 Gender Balance in Australian Boardrooms: The Business Case for Quotas (JF Corkery, Madeline Elizabeth Taylor and Melanie Hayden); Chapter 5 Women on Corporate Boards in Poland and Estonia in the Context of the EU Gender Equality Policy (Marta Pachocka, Aleksandra Szczerba-Zawada and Diana Eerma); Chapter 6 Socio-Economic Perspective on Women on Boards: An African Perspective (Justina Mutale and Anna Masłoń-Oracz); Chapter 7 Women's Experiences in Top Management Teams (TMTs): The Case of Israeli National Majority and National Minority Women (Helena Desivilya Syna, Michal Palgi and Maha Karkabi-Sabbah); Part IV Business Practice; Chapter 8 Female Entrepreneurship and Boardroom Diversity: The Case of Russia (Irina Tkachenko and Irina Pervukhina); Chapter 9 Female Representation on Swedish Corporate Boards (Gunnar Rimmel, Petra Inwinkl, Anna Lindstrand and Ida Ohlsson); Chapter 10 Females on Corporate Boards: French Perspectives: Towards More Diversity? (Nabyla Daidj); Chapter 11 The 2017 New Zealand Stock Exchange Directors’ Network Analysis and the Effect of ‘Soft’ Reporting Regimes on Board Diversity (Rosanne Hawarden); Chapter 12 Women on Boards: Perspectives from BRIC and Turkey (Güler Aras and Ozlem Kutlu Furtuna); Part V Conclusion; Conclusion: Woman on Boards: What Will be the Next Step? (Güler Aras and Maria Aluchna)
Maria Aluchna is an associate professor at the Department of Management Theory, Warsaw School of Economics, Poland. Güler Aras is a professor of Finance and Accounting at Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey, and a visiting professor at Georgetown University McDonough School of Business, USA.
