Why female board representation matters The role of female directors in reducing male CEO overconfidence

We suggest a novel reason why there might be a need for female board representation. Female participation in the boardroom attenuates the CEO’s overconfident views about his firm’s prospects as we find that male CEOs at firms with female directors are less likely to hold deepin-the-money options. Fu...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Goergen, Marc, Chen, Jie, Sau Leung, Woon, Song, Wei
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:España
Institución:IE
Repositorio:Repositorio IE
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.ie.edu:20.500.14417/3656
Acceso en línea:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jempfin.2019.06.002
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14417/3656
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Female board representation
CEO overconfidence
Investment
Firm performance
53 Ciencias Económicas::5311 Organización y dirección de empresas
ODS 5 - Igualdad de género
Descripción
Sumario:We suggest a novel reason why there might be a need for female board representation. Female participation in the boardroom attenuates the CEO’s overconfident views about his firm’s prospects as we find that male CEOs at firms with female directors are less likely to hold deepin-the-money options. Further, we argue that female board representation matters for industries where male CEO overconfidence is more prevalent. We find support for our argument as female directors are associated with less aggressive investment policies, better acquisition decisions, and improved financial performance for firms operating in industries with high overconfidence prevalence. We also identify a market failure around economic crises. Firms that do not have (sufficient) female board representation suffer a greater drop in performance as a result of the crisis than those that have female board representation.