Women in the boardroom: Performance and Quotas
(2012) BUSN88 20121Department of Business Administration
- Abstract
- Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate how the percentage of female directors on a company’s board affects the firm’s performance. The empirical results of this thesis will be used to help decide whether Canada should establish a quota for female board members.
Theories: There are four main theories referenced in this thesis, they are; agency theory, signaling theory, resource dependency theory, and board size and performance.
Methodology: Three measurements are used to evaluate firm performance, they are; average return, Tobin’s q, and return on assets. Three types of regressions are used, they are; ordinary least squares, fixed effects, and two stage least squares. The data needed to perform this thesis was taken primarily... (More) - Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate how the percentage of female directors on a company’s board affects the firm’s performance. The empirical results of this thesis will be used to help decide whether Canada should establish a quota for female board members.
Theories: There are four main theories referenced in this thesis, they are; agency theory, signaling theory, resource dependency theory, and board size and performance.
Methodology: Three measurements are used to evaluate firm performance, they are; average return, Tobin’s q, and return on assets. Three types of regressions are used, they are; ordinary least squares, fixed effects, and two stage least squares. The data needed to perform this thesis was taken primarily from annual reports and stock indices.
Conclusion: This thesis has come to the conclusion that there is no observable performance benefit to adding more women to the board of directors. Out of all the regressions performed not a single one found a significant and positive relationship between the percentage of women on the board and performance. These results suggest that if Canada decides to implement a gender quota for public corporations, they should not expect to observe any increase in firm performance. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/2733054
- author
- Fagergren, Carl LU and Hurst, Samuel
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- BUSN88 20121
- year
- 2012
- type
- H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
- subject
- keywords
- Keywords: Firm Performance, Women, Board of Directors, Quota, Canada, Corporate Governance, Gender.
- language
- English
- id
- 2733054
- date added to LUP
- 2012-09-06 10:10:08
- date last changed
- 2012-09-06 10:10:08
@misc{2733054,
abstract = {{Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate how the percentage of female directors on a company’s board affects the firm’s performance. The empirical results of this thesis will be used to help decide whether Canada should establish a quota for female board members.
Theories: There are four main theories referenced in this thesis, they are; agency theory, signaling theory, resource dependency theory, and board size and performance.
Methodology: Three measurements are used to evaluate firm performance, they are; average return, Tobin’s q, and return on assets. Three types of regressions are used, they are; ordinary least squares, fixed effects, and two stage least squares. The data needed to perform this thesis was taken primarily from annual reports and stock indices.
Conclusion: This thesis has come to the conclusion that there is no observable performance benefit to adding more women to the board of directors. Out of all the regressions performed not a single one found a significant and positive relationship between the percentage of women on the board and performance. These results suggest that if Canada decides to implement a gender quota for public corporations, they should not expect to observe any increase in firm performance.}},
author = {{Fagergren, Carl and Hurst, Samuel}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Women in the boardroom: Performance and Quotas}},
year = {{2012}},
}