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Journal of Business Ethics
Published in: Journal of Business Ethics 4/2021

08-07-2019 | Original Paper

The Glass Pyramid: Informal Gender Status Hierarchy on Boards

Authors: Lívia Markóczy, Sunny Li Sun, Jigao Zhu

Published in: Journal of Business Ethics | Issue 4/2021

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Abstract

Drawing on the status characteristic theory, we investigate the effect of gender on board directors’ status ranking and find that all else being equal, female directors’ status ranking is 81.48% of one position lower than that of male directors, a discrepancy that is attributable to gender. We theorize on the mechanism that determines the ways in which the status value of gender on a board affects board interactions, and we predict how this mechanism influences firm outcomes, including excessive managerial spending, social responsibility performance, and firm risk. We test our hypotheses in Chinese firms using an unbalanced panel that includes 5396 firm-year observations (86,019 director-year observations) for a period of 6 years and find them supported.
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Appendix
Available only for authorised users
Footnotes
1
For an exception, see Hillman et al. (2002), but even this study fails to look at the direct effect of gender-based status ranking by boards on firm outcomes, as we attempt to do in this paper.
 
2
The results of these tests are available upon request.
 
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Metadata
Title
The Glass Pyramid: Informal Gender Status Hierarchy on Boards
Authors
Lívia Markóczy
Sunny Li Sun
Jigao Zhu
Publication date
08-07-2019
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Published in
Journal of Business Ethics / Issue 4/2021
Print ISSN: 0167-4544
Electronic ISSN: 1573-0697
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04247-z

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