Search results

This study aims to explore the relationship between board diversity and financial performance, examining how the presence of women on corporate boards affects metrics such as profitability. In addition, this study investigates how corporate governance and ownership structure influence gender diversity policies and the appointment of women to boards.

Two hypotheses were proposed and following regression models were developed for data analysis. The sample for this study consists of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in five years (2015–2019). The data was extracted from the Taiwan Economic Journal Taiwan database with the final data set comprised 9,379 firm-year observations.

This study indicates a positive association between board diversity and financial performance. Moreover, the relationship between female directors on the board and financial performance is stronger for firms with a higher percentage of institutional investors.

By highlighting how gender-balanced boards and engaged institutional shareholders improve profitability, this study suggests that actively recruiting women directors and pursuing governance reforms that empower shareholders can pay dividends for Taiwanese companies. The results make an important contribution to the limited research on diversity's impact within Asian corporate settings.

With the increased concentration of populations in urban areas and the consequent occupation of marginal land, largely by the poor, the need for effective means of understanding and managing urban risk is immense. This paper explores the existence and variability of fire risk in the informal settlement of “Imizamo Yethu”, an informal settlement situated in Cape Town, South Africa. The case study mainly analyses the factors influencing the conditions of risk. It highlights the need for a shift away from the hegemonic dialogue around so-called natural disasters and goes further to challenge the view of risk as an interaction between external, natural hazards and internally generated vulnerability. The paper explores how different factors affecting fire risk operate at different scales and the resulting importance of recognising and understanding intra-community and even intra-household variability of risk. In so doing, it becomes evident that for risk reduction strategies to be effective, focus cannot simply be placed on structural interventions, but must encompass elements of social development which are sensitive to current livelihood strategies.