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.     

De Bruin,A.; Teasdale,S. (ed.), A Research Agenda for Social Entrepreneurship,Edward Elgar Publishing,Cheltenham, UK,and Northampton,USA, 2019, pp. 183, bibliography,index, US $131.96

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

Collective Action as the Material Expression of Opinion-Based Group Membership

In this article, we argue that progress in the study of collective action rests on an increasingly sophisticated application of the social identity approach. We develop the view, however, that the application of this theoretical perspective has been limited by theoretical and empirical difficulties in distinguishing between social categories and psychological groups. These problems have undermined the ability of researchers to correctly specify the collective identities that actually underpin many instances of collective action. As a partial solution to this problem we focus on collective identities based on shared opinion (opinion-based groups). We develop the proposition that much collective action reflects the crystallization or instantiation of opinion-based groups. We also outline an intervention aimed at stimulating commitment to collective action through group-based interaction involving opinion-based group members. We conclude by emphasizing that opinion-based groups tend to be most successful when they present themselves as being representative or aligned with dominant, positively valued social categories such as nations.     

Women,Health and Housing Assistance: Implications in an Emerging Era of Housing Provision

Women and the households that they head are over‐represented among the most economically and socially disadvantaged households in Australia. Recent changes in the provision of housing assistance for low income households in Australia have distinct implications for women and this paper examines the implications of these changes. Shifting the emphasis in housing assistance away from publicly provided and rent‐controlled housing to direct subsidisation of rents for private tenants has important, largely negative, consequences for the health, affordability and security of housing for many women. This situation is made worse given the current housing affordability crisis in Australia; a crisis that extends across all private housing tenures.     

Social development strategies of a non-governmental grassroots women's organisation in Nigeria

Social development initiatives of rural and poor urban women in Africa are efforts that redress the post-colonial economic development planning oversights of many African nations. Grass roots movements are responsive initiatives that have provided rural women with bottom-up management and planning opportunities focused on quality of life issues for themselves, their families, the community, and, ultimately, the nation. Since 1982, Country Women's Association of Nigeria (COWAN), a non-governmental organisation, has addressed the needs of rural and urban poor women through economic activities that have empowered them and increased their levels of self-sufficiency. With COWAN's emphasis on popular participation and indigenous leadership, macro-community development practices are employed, as is the recognition of individual and collective skills and talents. Social workers of today should be aware of commonalities that exists in the struggles of these and other Third World women, for their struggles are not unlike those of oppressed groups found in the USA and other developed countries.     

Media, ‘Fat Panic’ and Public Pedagogy: Mapping Contested Terrain

Discourses regarding a ‘global obesity crisis’ and alternative frames (e.g. weight‐inclusive approaches to health) have proliferated through various media of communication. These media range from traditional print and visual formats (e.g. newspapers and television shows) to digital media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube), which enable different publics to produce, and not just consume, text, images and other data relating to the body. Reflecting a sociological understanding of educational practices as extending beyond formal schooling, mediated obesity discourse and counter‐movements have also been conceptualised as public pedagogies, which instruct people how to relate to their own and other's bodies, health and subjectivities. This article examines what is critically known about various media at a time when governments and agencies are reinvigorating the global war on obesity, with populations being ‘advised’ to become and remain conscientious weight watchers. In conclusion, the article underscores the salience of social studies of the media when seeking to rethink obesity, incorporating critical reference to moral panic theory and the need to better understand what media can ‘do’ as enactments of public pedagogy.     

Extended structures of mediation: Re-examining brokerage in dynamic networks

In this paper we revisit the concept of brokerage in social networks. We elaborate on the concept of brokerage as a process, identifying three distinct classes of brokerage behavior. Based on this process model, we develop a framework for measuring brokerage opportunities in dynamic relational data. Using data on emergent inter-organizational collaborations, we employ the dynamic brokerage framework to examine the relationship between organizational attributes and coordination in the evolving network. Comparing the findings of our process-based definition with traditional, static approaches, we identify important dimensions of organizational action that would be missed by the latter approach.     

Predictors of organizations’ crisis communication approaches: Full versus limited disclosure

This study investigates predictors of the public relations (full disclosure) versus legal (limited disclosure) approaches that may be used by organizations during a preventable crisis. Both tangible and intangible aspects of an organization were explored. The results reveal that degree of crisis preparation, public relations influences, and the perception of crisis as an opportunity were significant predictors that determine full versus limited disclosure selection.     

Retirement Planning Among Hispanics: In God’s Hands?

We conducted a qualitative study on retirement preparedness among middle-aged and older low-income Hispanics in Los Angeles. Data were derived from four focus groups conducted in the greater Los Angeles area. Findings demonstrate how behavioral and cultural factors—family experiences, religiosity, and denial of retirement—explain the lack of savings and preparedness for retirement. Findings also indicate that the majority of participants want to be economically independent and to keep working until they are unable to do so. Participants helped their parents financially but did not feel comfortable asking their own children for help. Instead, participants placed their survival in retirement “in God’s hands.”     

Trafficked children and child protection systems in the European Union

Child trafficking is a significant social problem across the European Union (EU). A discourse has emerged of state services failing trafficked children, who are portrayed as especially vulnerable. Less attention is paid to the socio-political conditions within the EU that result in exclusion. Such exclusion adds to the situational vulnerability that many children on the move experience and it may lead to exploitation. This paper is based on a review of 20 multi-national European Commission funded projects about child trafficking. The projects addressed the child trafficking priorities outlined in the EU Anti-Trafficking Strategy [(2012). Strategy towards the Eradication of Trafficking in Human Beings 2012–2016, COM (2012) 286, final. Retrieved from http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52012DC0286&;from=EN]. Projects were reviewed via in-depth reading. Protective services for children in origin, transit and host countries contribute to the conditions that sustain child trafficking. Systems do not have the capacity to manage the consequences of globalisation. Consequently, exclusionary criteria are applied on the basis of gender, form of exploitation and ethnicity. In this review, being an EU citizen did not result in any guarantees of protection. Better protection requires commitment and investment in preventative programmes.