PROF. MARC GOERGEN ON CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

Academics have been devoting more and more attention to board gender diversity and its effects over the last two decades. However, most of that literature has a relatively narrow focus as it limits itself to studying the effects of female directors on firm performance and firm value as well as risk taking. Nevertheless, recent literature has adopted a much broader perspective by studying the impact of female directors on various aspects of corporate decision making. This literature tends to concur that female directors and managers have a significant influence on corporate decisions. For example, firms with female directors tend to focus more on corporate social responsibility (CSR) than firms with male directors only. Female directors are also less likely to downsize their workforce. They are also more likely to hire female top executives. Female directors also differ from their male colleagues in other ways: they tend to make fewer acquisitions and for those acquisitions they make t...