Search results for " Directors"
showing 10 items of 38 documents
The board of directors and dividenc policy: the effect of gender diversity
2015
In this article, we aim to study the impact on dividends policy of gender diversity on the board of directors (hereinafter BD). We hypothesize that the proportion of women directors, the proportion of independent, institutional, and executive female directors, and the percentage of shares held by female directors on BD, have an impact on the dividends policy of Spanish companies. Our findings, analyzing the whole sample, show that the proportion of female directors and shares held by female directors are positively associated with dividend payout, while the percentage of institutional female directors has a negative impact. The percentage of independent and executive female directors has no…
Resistance to Change in the Corporate Elite
2017
In this empirical study, we investigate the variation in firms’ response to institutional pressure for gender-balanced boards, focusing specifically on the preservation of prevailing practices of director selection and its impact on the representation of women on the board of directors. Using 8 years of data from publicly listed Nordic corporations, we show societal pressure to be one of the determinants of female directorship. Moreover, in some corporations, the director selection process may work to maintain “a traditional type of board”. In such boards, demographic diversity among male members appears to be associated with a lower share of female directors, although we cannot establish w…
Female Institutional Directors on Boards and Firm Value
2016
The aim of this research is to examine what impact female institutional directors on boards have on corporate performance. Previous research shows that institutional female directors cannot be considered as a homogeneous group since they represent investors who may or may not maintain business relations with the companies on whose corporate boards they sit. Thus, it is not only the effect of female institutional directors as a whole on firm value that has been analysed, but also the impact of pressure-resistant female directors, who represent institutional investors (investment, pension and mutual funds) that only invest in the company, and do not maintain a business relation with the firm.…
On the Internationalization of Corporate Boards
2013
This study investigates the internationalization of corporate boards, using a sample of 346 non-financial listed Nordic firms during 2001–2008. Given a high level of international activity, these firms have surprisingly few foreign directors. The picture of international expertise changes considerably, however, if we also count the international experience of national directors. The percentage of foreign directors is related primarily to financial internationalization rather than foreign sales, and thus presumably to the monitoring rather than advisory functions. The international experience of the nationals covaries with foreign sales, and increases with the share of foreign directors. Thu…
Do women directors behave more ethically than men directors of the audit committees with respect to the quality of the accounting information?
2018
In this analysis, we aim at investigating how audit committees (ACs) gender diversity impacts on the quality of financial information, calculated with the opinion that external auditors give firms in the audit report. We hypothesize that there is a negative relation between gender diversity on ACs and the likelihood of receiving a qualification with errors, non-compliance and the omission of information, and a positive association between gender diversity on ACs and the probability of disclosing qualifications with uncertainties. The results show a negative association between the proportion of women directors on ACs, the proportion of institutional women directors on ACs and ACs chaired by…
Board of director attributes: effects on financial performance in SMEs
2021
This paper analyses the relationship between board of director (BoD) attributes and financial performance in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Although SMEs are the backbone of world economies, most studies on this relationship focused on large companies and did not consider many typical or recommended processes and activities carried out by SME BoDs. We monitored a set of variables related to BoD attributes such as composition, characteristics, structure and processes for 184 Italian SMEs along with their financials over a 4-year period (2014–2017). We controlled for enterprise-specific characteristics such as annual sales growth, assets value, sales turnover, leverage, com pany s…
Is Board Gender Diversity a Driver of CEO Compensation?: Examining the Leadership Style of Institutional Women Directors
2017
In this investigation, we aim at examining the influence of institutional female directors on CEO compensation. Specifically, we investigate the impact of institutional female directors as a whole, differentiating by whether female directors have business ties with the firms’ boards on which they sit (pressure-sensitive female directors) or do not have business links (pressure-resistant female directors). We hypothesize that there is a nonlinear association, specifically quadratic, between institutional, pressureresistant and pressure-sensitive female directors on boards, and CEO compensation. Our findings show that CEO compensation decreases with low levels of institutional female director…
On the Internationalization of Corporate Boards
2013
Despite the global reach of their commercial activities, many multinational firms have proved slow in internationalizing their boards of directors. Based on a panel study of the internationalization of the boards of 347 non-financial firms from the Nordic countries, we find a higher fraction of international board membership in firms with more foreign sales, in firms with more foreign ownership and in firms whose shares are traded on foreign (mostly European) stock exchanges. Moreover, we find international directors and national directors with international experience complementary. The first-mentioned group is found to serve a monitoring role, related to financial internationalization of …
Neural Networks to Determine the Relationships Between Business Innovation and Gender Aspects
2021
Gender aspects of management, innovation and entrepreneurship are gaining more and more importance as cross-cutting issues for researchers, practitioners and decision makers. Extant literature pays a growing attention to the hypothesis that there exists a correlation between the gender diversity of corporate boards of directors and the business attitude to innovation. In this paper we introduce a working framework to test the aforementioned hypothesis and to examine the correlation between board diversity and innovation perception of a business. This framework is based on correlation computation and feed-forward neural networks, and it is used to evaluate whether the gender component may be…
Validity of the Mini-Nutritional Assessment Scale for Evaluating Frailty Status in Older Adults
2019
Objectives: Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) may not be performed in clinical practice as it takes too much time and requires special training. The Mini-Nutritional Assessment (MNA) is widely used to assess nutritional status in older adults. We aimed to determine whether or not the MNA can estimate frailty status defined by the Fried criteria. Setting and Participants: Six hundred two outpatients aged 65 years or older who underwent the CGA were included the study. Measures: Frailty status was defined by 5 dimensions including shrinking, exhaustion, low levels of activity, weakness, and slowness: 0 for robust, 1–2 for prefrail, and 3–5 for frail. MNA was performed in all participan…