Search results

This paper reviews the recent “Women at the Top” Conference held in London by the British Psychological Society's Division of Occupational Psychology and offers some suggestions for future research on women at the top.

The report is generated from attendee observations, notes, other reviews and podcast recordings following the conference.

Conference proceedings highlighted key areas of interest and current work for psychologists tackling the dearth of women leaders. A majority of presentations examined the role of stereotyping and prejudice in understanding leadership and gender, while a few others discussed contextual factors shaping women's leadership journeys such as life experiences and external parties such as head‐hunters. The limited focus on other diversity dimensions such as racio‐ethnicity is noted.

In light of the conference proceedings, the authors discuss how psychological research could further contribute to addressing the lack of women at the top of organisations. The authors suggest that models of stereotyping and prejudice in leadership need further contextualization and call for more research on multiple stakeholders accountable for women's leadership experiences, particularly those in positions of power and privilege such as current male leaders and Chairmen. Also stressed is the need for an intersectional approach which takes into account the multiple identities of women at the top.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how directors’ roles and social identities are shaped by gender and board life stage, using pre- and post-crisis Iceland as the setting. Recent theoretical work suggests the importance of directors’ monitoring and resource provision roles at certain board life stages; however, there is limited empirical evidence of directors’ identification with these roles as well as social role identification as a member of the board.

The authors contribute empirical evidence from interviews with 23 corporate directors in Iceland on individual identification with the director role of monitoring and resource provision, relational identification with the CEO role and social identification as a member of the board.

Prior to the crisis, male directors identified more strongly with resource provision and with their social roles and less strongly with monitoring roles. Compared to their male counterparts, pre-crisis female directors identified more strongly with monitoring and did not identify with their social roles. After the crisis, mature boards’ male director role identities were little changed; male directors continued to identify with resource provision and social identification, rather than monitoring, roles. Compared to pre-crisis, post-crisis female directors described greater identity with their resource provision roles and reported that male directors resented their attempts to fulfill their monitoring roles. In post-crisis, newly formed diverse boards, male and female directors reported very similar role identities which reflected balanced monitoring and resource provision roles, for example providing the board with ethical individual identities and unblemished reputations. The findings of this paper indicate that board composition and life cycle stage might have more impact on director identity than a pre- or post-crisis setting. These findings suggest implications for theory, practice and future research.

This paper provides further empirical evidence of the roles male and female directors identify with on corporate boards. Its originality lies in the context of the board work in terms of newly formed and mature boards, before and after the financial crisis, with differing gender composition (male-dominated and gender-balanced boards).

The purpose of this study is to examine the importance of human capital and professional networks for women’s and men’s appointment to the boards of directors of public companies. The study provides an in-depth analysis of how human capital and professional networks contribute to women’s as compared with men’s odds of corporate board membership.

The study analyzes the human capital and professional networks of 494 male and female corporate outside (non-executive) directors appointed between 2005 and 2010 to the boards of US public companies listed in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index. Human capital was measured as director age, education and professional experience (function and role). Professional network variables measured included composition of professional network, network centrality, constraint and cohesion.

The study’s findings reveal that the characteristics that impact the appointment of women as outside directors to public company boards differ from those of men. Relative to men, certain professions such as government relations and education improve the odds of appointment of women to corporate boards, while age lowers women’s odds. The number of network ties and the degree of network cohesion were also significant in predicting the likelihood of female board appointment to public corporations relative to men’s odds. The final model was able to predict female board membership correctly only in 28 per cent of the cases, while male board membership was predicted in 89 per cent of the cases, suggesting that factors other than human capital and professional networks (e.g. their gender) impact women’s appointment to corporate boards.

To the authors ' knowledge, this study is the first to comprehensively examine the professional network components of female and male directors along with their human capital in the analysis of their prospects for board appointment. The conceptualization of professional networks as well the depth of quantitative analysis of the network components of the study advance the extant literature on the composition of corporate boards.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how an environmental threat (possible quotas for female supervisory directors) might change supervisory board gender composition in SBF120 French company boards between 2008 and 2010.

From a census of supervisory board membership of SBF120 companies in France in January 2008 and December 2010, data were obtained to test hypotheses relating to changes in gender composition of boards and demographic differences between new and earlier director appointees. The authors drew on institutional theory to inform the discussion of this paper’s findings.

The authors reveal significant increases over 2008-2010 in SBF120 board female representation and significant cohort differences between recent and earlier appointees. Newer female appointees differed from male peers and from earlier appointed females and males, bringing youth and international experience. New females were more likely to gain CAC40 seats than their male peers. There was an increase in boards with multiple female directors.

Actual motivations for increase in female appointments are unknown, but institutional theory provides possible explanations, as suggestion of coercive forces loomed. Chairmen of larger firms may have made strategic choices to attract younger and English-speaking foreign women, before the rush. Limitations include the descriptive nature of the paper, but it sets a benchmark for later studies to monitor progress in depth.

The talent pool for female directors has widened to include foreign English-speaking women, bringing a range of new insights and experience of international governance practice to traditional French boardrooms. However, this could be seen as further discriminatory practice that requires female appointees to bring more human and social capital than that required of their male peers.

This is the first paper charting the changes in supervisory board composition during the three-year period of environmental unrest as quotas were proposed and legislated in France and comparing new and existing cohort French director demographics.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the 2014 Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Conference held at Technische Universitat Munchen, Munich.

The report is based on delegate observations, notes and audience reactions to papers presented on research conducted.

The papers presented new boundaries on diversity research. This included research on the importance of cultural diversity in the outcomes in the hotel industry by being led by foreign managers in Cyprus; how skilled Romanians construct and understand their identities as skilled professionals and members of stigmatised European migrants and how a diverse workforce experiences power utilising a Foucauladian understanding of power.

This report integrates a number of themes from diversity research across the world, highlighting progress and the suggested direction for future diversity research.