Females and Precarious Board Positions: Further Evidence of the Glass Cliff

The ‘glass cliff’ posits that when women achieve high profile roles, these are at firms in precarious positions. Previous research analysed appointments (male/female), estimated the precariousness of firms involved and drew inferences about the glass cliff. This study is different as it directly tests the relationship between a precarious situation and changes in board gender diversity. The sample is companies listed on the UK stock exchange reporting an initial loss in the years 2004–2006. A matched control sample is used in a difference‐in‐differences analysis to avoid inadvertently attributing improvements arising from societal/regulatory changes in gender diversity to the loss event. Findings suggest that when the loss is ‘big’ there is a difference in the increase in gender diversity versus both the control and the ‘small’ loss subsamples, i.e. compelling evidence of the glass cliff. In the context of ongoing political and social debates about women on boards our work (i) identifies continuing structural barriers for women ascending to board level in that women are more likely to be over‐represented on boards of companies that are more precarious and (ii) sounds a note of caution about celebrating increased gender diversity on boards without considering the precariousness of the company involved.     

Total Board Compensation,Governance and Performance of Spanish Listed Companies

In this paper we present empirical evidence on the relationship between board remuneration of a sample of large Spanish companies and a set of explanatory variables such as performance and size of the company. The objective is to provide additional empirical evidence based on the agency theory for the Spanish institutional context, which differs from most ‘Anglo–Saxon’ model studies. We focus on the impact of a company's governance structure on the relationship between pay and performance. Specifically, we consider ownership concentration and firm leverage as key determinants of the board–shareholders relationship. Our results confirm the positive relationship between board remuneration and company performance, which is stronger for book values than for stock market measures. Industry performance also explains the remuneration and provides useful information for evaluating board behaviour. Company size is also related to board remuneration and affects the pay–performance relationship, although it is not relevant when we use an elasticity approach. Finally, the governance structure of companies is relevant when explaining the power of the compensation–performance relationship, and differences between the impact of ownership concentration and firm leverage on this relationship are found.     

Does the Stock Market Gender Stereotype Corporate Boards? Evidence from the Market's Reaction to Directors' Trades

Attitudes towards male and female managers within organizations are well documented, but how the stock market perceives their relative capabilities is less studied. Recent evidence documents a negative short‐run market reaction to the appointment of female chief executive officers and suggests that female executives are less informed than their male counterparts about future corporate performance. These results appear to dispute the stock market value of having women on corporate boards. However, such short‐run market reactions may retain a ‘gender bias’, reflecting the prevalence of negative stereotypes, where the market reacts to ‘beliefs’ rather than ‘performance’. This study tests for such bias by examining the stock market reaction to directors' trades in their own companies' shares, by measuring both the short‐run and longer‐term returns after the directors' trades. Allowing for firm and trade effects, some evidence is found that, in the longer term, markets recognize that female executives' trades are informative about future corporate performance, although initially markets underestimate these effects. This has important implications for research that has attempted to assess the value of board diversity by examining only short‐run stock market responses.     

The Glass Cliff: Evidence that Women are Over-Represented in Precarious Leadership Positions

There has been much research and conjecture concerning the barriers women face in trying to climb the corporate ladder, with evidence suggesting that they typically confront a ‘glass ceiling’ while men are more likely to benefit from a ‘glass escalator’. But what happens when women do achieve leadership roles? And what sorts of positions are they given? This paper argues that while women are now achieving more high profile positions, they are more likely than men to find themselves on a ‘glass cliff’, such that their positions are risky or precarious. This hypothesis was investigated in an archival study examining the performance of FTSE 100 companies before and after the appointment of a male or female board member. The study revealed that during a period of overall stock‐market decline those companies who appointed women to their boards were more likely to have experienced consistently bad performance in the preceding five months than those who appointed men. These results expose an additional, largely invisible, hurdle that women need to overcome in the workplace. Implications for the evaluation of women leaders are discussed and directions for future research are outlined.     

Public Day Care Centres,Company Day Care Centres,and Segregation Between Men and Women in the Labour Market: the Case of the Netherlands*

Abstract. What is needed to diminish segregation between men and women in the labour market is a program of affirmative action for the Netherlands as a whole. Specific measures aimed at the removal of barriers between occupations cannot be successful unless they are imbedded in such an overall program. A necessary part of such a plan are facilities that enable women and men to combine unpaid parental tasks and paid labour. In contrast with public day care centres, company day care centres do not fit into such a plan, because they even enlarge existing segregation. Company day care centres and other measures to facilitate parental care and paid labour are more often found in industries with a larger share of female workers. This relationship is found for both the Netherlands and the United States. It is concluded that it is in the interest of employers as well as women's emancipation to increase the number of public day care centres instead of the number of company day care centres.     

Editorial

In this paper we want to investigate the impact of company owners on the low percentage of women on management boards and whether they are attempting to increase this percentage. After analysing whether ownership concentration influences the number of women on management boards we distinguish between different types of owners. We find that ownership concentration has no effect on the presence of women on German management boards, we show however that institutional and individual owners have a significantly positive effect. Classifying institutional owners into national and foreign owners illustrates that foreign investors are the primary driver of the positive effect within the class of institutional owners; the presence of national investors that are strongly influenced by the national banking system does not show any effect. Our analyses are based on 15,976 management board member positions from 2000 to 2007 in approximately 600 German-listed companies.     

高管权力与公司治理效率——基于国有上市公司高管变更的视角

本文基于国有企业的高管变更视角分析了高管权力对公司治理效率的影响.以2004 -2008年的国有上市公司为研究样本,实证发现:(1)总体上高管变更与公司业绩呈负相关,而高管权力的增强会降低其因业绩低劣而被强制性更换的可能性,表明国企高管的权力在高管变更决策中发挥了显著的职位堑壕效应;(2)发生了高管变更的公司其未来业绩有明显的提高,但这一促进效应仅在权力较小的高管被变更后出现,而权力较大的高管被变更后公司业绩并没有得到改进;(3)进一步的研究显示,政府控制层级的提升和制度环境的改善能够抑制国企高管的权力寻租行为.本文的研究结果有助于我们理解国有企业高管权力的经济后果,并为当前有关国企公司治理和高管选聘体制改革的政策导向提供了经验启示.     

Learning and development experiences of self-initiated expatriate women in the United Arab Emirates

The article explores self-initiated expatriate women's experiences of working and learning in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Adler's (Adler, N. 1987. Pacific basin managers: A Gaijin, not a woman. Human Resource Management 26, no. 2: 169–91) seminal study and Tung's (Tung, R.L. 2004. Female expatriates: The model of the global manager. Organizational Dynamics 33: 243–53) research suggest that expatriate women operating in a foreign host culture are categorized as a ‘Third Gender’: host nationals would perceive them as ‘foreign’ first and ‘women’ second, consequently according them different privileged treatment inworkplaces than host national women colleagues. This qualitative study of self-initiated expatriate women highlights how the women's constructions of themselves as ‘foreign’ and ‘female’ in the UAE provide a lens through which they reflect upon their own experiences of learning and development. In the absence of support from their own organizations and/or driven by their own aspirations, the women embarked upon their professional development initiatives; networking, coaching and formal qualifications. Key themes of vulnerability in being a foreigner, gendered workplaces, informal learning and women's agency in their own learning and development emerge from the analysis. The women's experiences suggest that their ‘Third Gender’ identity frames both constraints and opportunities within their social and work environment. The research focus on self-initiated expatriate women developing their professional practice, without the organizational Human Resource Development (HRD) support normally provided for assigned expatriates, is a key contribution to HRD, expatriate and international management literature where gender has tended to be ignored.     

Women on boards and firm performance

This study investigates the financial performance of Dutch companies both with and without women on their boards. The analysis extends earlier methods used in research by Catalyst (The bottom line: corporate performance and women’s representation on boards, 2007) and McKinsey (Women matter. Gender diversity, a corporate performance driver. McKinsey & Company, USA, 2007), two studies that are often cited in the literature, although, each has a number of methodological shortcomings. This article adds to the international debate, which is often normative, through examining 99 listed companies in the Dutch Female Board Index. Our results show that firms with women directors perform better than those without women on their boards.     

Those Glass Chains that Bind You: How British Muslim Women Professionals Experience Career,Faith and Family

This paper contributes to gender and diversity research through proposing a new theoretical construct: glass chains. We develop ‘glass chains’ as a metaphor to illuminate how highly educated British Pakistani Muslim women professionals in the UK negotiate a fine balance between faith, family and personal ambition. Using a qualitative approach, we highlight tensions between religious and familial guidance within Islam, and workplace practices. Drawing upon the construct of ‘glass chains’, we articulate how 37 British Pakistani Muslim career women felt bound, by invisible glass chains, to the tenets of their faith. We show how the pull of glass chains obliged these women to resist certain career‐advancing opportunities. In so doing, we borrow from French philosopher Michel Foucault ideas about self‐oriented moral codes, engaging with his arguments that individuals may prioritize, over other obligations, the ties (or glass chains) which bind them to personal value sets in order that they may become ‘ethical selves’. While previous glass metaphors highlight barriers to female progression from external and structural angles, ‘glass chains’ are, by contrast, concerned with the potential for internal and personal constraints on women's ambitions. The metaphor ‘glass chains’ may be extended to enhance understanding of career constraints among other workers.     

市场化进程、产权配置与上市公司资产剥离业绩——基于同属管辖交易视角的研究

本文以2004-2005年沪深A股上市公司资产剥离事件为研究对象,基于同属管辖交易的独特视角,从市场化进程差异、资产剥离同属管辖交易以及企业产权配置三个方面探讨对上市公司资产剥离业绩改进的影响.研究发现,市场化程度越高、地方政府干预越少,上市公司资产剥离后的业绩越好.但是,如果资产剥离交易双方同属地方政府管辖,则对上市公司的业绩具有显著的负面影响.进一步的研究发现,地方政府控制的产权生质对上市公司资产剥离后业绩改进产生负面影响,非政府控制的产权性质则有显著的正面促进作用.     

A Matter of Learning: How Human Resources Affect Organizational Performance

Recently, a number of studies have tried to examine the processes that explain the influence of high performance work systems (HPWS) on company performance, in an attempt to understand which variables mediate this relationship and to what extent they do so. The importance of the organizational learning capability (OLC) construct has traditionally been outlined as being essential for a company's survival and effective performance. Thus, it seems important to establish whether HPWS can be considered an antecedent of OLC, and consequently to confirm whether OLC acts as a mediating variable in the HPWS–company performance linkage. Bearing in mind that HPWS represent a ‘bundle’ of mutually reinforcing, overlapping and synergistic individual human resource practices, this positive connection between HPWS and OLC seems reasonable. We tested our hypotheses by applying a structural equation methodology to a sample of 163 Spanish companies. Our findings show that the effects of HPWS on organizational performance are mediated by OLC.     

股权分割、公司业绩与投资者保护

本文首先回顾了股权分割与公司业绩的相关文献 ,发现并没有一致的实证依据证明股权分割损害了上市公司的业绩。在此基础上 ,我们构建了一个更为广泛的上市公司1995～2001年的面板数据样本 ,对上市公司股权分割与公司业绩的关系以及公司上市后的业绩变迁进行了实证的研究 ,结果发现:(1)公司的业绩与非流通股 (国家股、法人股 )比例呈显著的U形关系 ,非流通股独大或独小并没有对公司业绩产生不利影响 ,相反适度混合的股权结构对公司业绩是最不利的;(2)上市公司在上市后的经营业绩整体呈逐年加速下滑趋势 ,而股权分割的差异对该趋势无显著的影响。我们认为 ,把股权分割当成是中国股市问题的核心是具有误导性的 ,私有产权和全流通并不能消除股票市场的委托代理问题。我国股票市场问题的关键在于缺乏有效的投资者保护机制 ,无法对政府、大股东和管理层的剥削行为进行约束 ,导致市场诚信的丧失。在制度性缺失的环境中 ,不同性质的公司控制者的行为方式不会有本质上的差异。我们认为股权问题的解决必须以投资者保护为基础 ,在我国大陆法系的架构下 ,当务之急是推动立法保护私有产权的合法权益 ,并通过引入“集体诉讼”和“辩方举证”机制加强投资者保护的效率     

论控股公司的风险与回报率

在完备的资本市场中,控股公司并不能给股东带来更多的好处,因此它并没有存在的依据;在非完备的资本市场中,控股公司通过多样化投资,能够在同等风险水平上增加小投资者的财富或者在相同回报率的水平上降低小投资者的投资风险。控股公司多层控股使整个控股公司体系的财务杠杆比率很高,因此控股公司实质上采取了高财务风险、高回报率的融资政策。     

上市公司高管更替模式对企业绩效的影响

本文以上市公司2005-2009年间高管更替数据为研究样本,引入了高管团队重组和战略连续性作为中介变量,探讨了不同高管更替模式对企业绩效的影响路径。研究结果表明,上市公司高管强制更替外部聘任对高管团队重组有正向影响,对战略连续性有负向影响,对企业绩效有负向影响,其中高管团队重组和战略连续性在强制更替外部聘任与企业绩效之间起到中介效应;上市公司高管强制更替内部聘任对高管团队重组影响不显著,对战略连续性有正向影响,对企业绩效有正向影响,其中战略连续性在强制更替内部聘任与企业绩效之间起到中介效应;另外,高管团队重组对企业绩效有负向影响,战略连续性对企业绩效有正向影响。     

Scheduling Methods for Efficient Stamping Operations at an Automotive Company

We consider scheduling issues at Beyçelik, a Turkish automotive stamping company that uses presses to give shape to metal sheets in order to produce auto parts. The problem concerns the minimization of the total completion time of job orders (i.e., makespan) during a planning horizon. This problem may be classified as a combined generalized flowshop and flexible flowshop problem with special characteristics. We show that the Stamping Scheduling Problem is NP‐Hard. We develop an integer programming‐based method to build realistic and usable schedules. Our results show that the proposed method is able to find higher quality schedules (i.e., shorter makespan values) than both the company's current process and a model from the literature. However, the proposed method has a relatively long run time, which is not practical for the company in situations when a (new) schedule is needed quickly (e.g., when there is a machine breakdown or a rush order). To improve the solution time, we develop a second method that is inspired by decomposition. We show that the second method provides higher‐quality solutions—and in most cases optimal solutions—in a shorter time. We compare the performance of all three methods with the company's schedules. The second method finds a solution in minutes compared to Beyçelik's current process, which takes 28 hours. Further, the makespan values of the second method are about 6.1% shorter than the company's schedules. We estimate that the company can save over €187,000 annually by using the second method. We believe that the models and methods developed in this study can be used in similar companies and industries.     

The financial crisis,investor activists and corporate strategy: will this mean shareholders in the boardroom?

The concept of stakeholder engagement is gaining increasing attention in the mainstream media and may feature as part of a corporation’s strategy for corporate social responsibility. Not only are boards considering how they might engage with key stakeholders, but stakeholders are also pursuing greater participation in the strategic decisions of companies in which they invest. While this is an emerging concept in companies governed by unitary boards, as in North America, the issue of stakeholder engagement in various forms is also entering debate in other countries around the world. In general, however, the idea of shareholder or stakeholder representation on the boards of most UK and Commonwealth companies is anathema. Forces now influencing the development of strategies for stakeholder engagement and the rise of active investors include changing corporate governance rules which give investors more power in the election of directors, the increasing role of pension plans and hedge fund investment groups which have produced investors who keep a close eye on company performance and value, and a sluggish or turbulent stock market as a result of the financial crisis initiated by the credit crunch in the sub-prime mortgage markets. In this paper the phenomenon of stakeholder representation is examined and results of a recent survey conducted among a large sample of New Zealand directors are presented. The findings suggest that these traditionally oriented boards are increasingly inwardly focused and are without an agenda for building and managing shareholder and stakeholder relations. Accordingly, such boards are unlikely to regard stakeholder engagement as a serious strategic issue and are thus also likely to miss significant opportunities in the changed business environment to benefit from stakeholder support.     

航运供应链上的品牌价值、公平关切与契约协调

航运供应链上的船公司提高企业品牌价值需要付出大量的投资成本,因此将会更加关注供应链上利润分配的公平。本文以单个船公司和单个货代公司构成的两级航运供应链为研究对象,运用博弈论分析船公司的公平关切行为和品牌投入意愿对航运供应链上各方利润的影响,探讨决策者非理性条件下航运供应链的合作模式和协调机制。研究表明：1）船公司的公平关切提高了其在供应链上利润分配占比,但降低了整个航运供应链的利润和效率;2）随着品牌投入意愿的提高,船公司的公平关切对航运供应链上各方决策的负作用就越明显;3）"收益共享成本共担"式契约能够消除公平关切的负作用,达到航运供应链纵向联盟的最优收益和整体效率。     

Queen Bees,Wannabees and Afraid to Bees: No More ‘Best Enemies’ for Women in Management?

There is a lack of research that problematizes solidarity behaviour and the Queen Bee label for women in management. Few studies contextualize the propensity for women to support each other to reach senior management or surface the shadow side of relationships between women in management. Underpinning assumptions of solidarity behaviour and Queen Bee focus upon individual women's behaviour. Neither questions whether women are enabled ‘natural allies’. It is assumed that women align themselves with women; in senior management women are responsible for the ‘women in management mantle’, and when they do not conform they are pejoratively labelled Queen Bees. Queen Bee ‘blames’ women for not supporting each other, constructs women as out of place in senior management and maintains a gendered status quo. This article provides a conceptual critique of solidarity behaviour and the Queen Bee as labels researchers and the popular media attach to women's behaviour in organizations. The aim is to challenge assumptions and inherent contradictions and highlight the negative impact of the sexist Queen Bee label, prompting us to reflexively question and challenge our own assumptions about solidarity behaviour and use of the Queen Bee label, to prevent unrealistic expectations of senior women and continued pejorative construction of women in management.