Board gender diversity’s impact on ESG performance through a cultural lens
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2024-07-03
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en
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This study investigates how board gender diversity affects ESG performance, considering national culture as a moderating factor. Unlike prior research that primarily focused on financial or innovative performance, this study delves into the impact of cultural context on board dynamics and behaviours. It utilizes four cultural measures as potential moderators and employs a fixed effects regression with time fixed effects and interaction terms on a dataset of 44,423 observations from 10,576 firms across thirty-eight countries, spanning seven years (2015-2021). The findings reveal the complex and sometimes contradictory role of cultural factors in moderating the relationship between board gender diversity and ESG performance. Although the main regression analysis did not support the moderating influence of cultural variables, robustness checks showed subtle impacts of these factors. A consistent positive direct relationship was found between board gender diversity and ESG performance, as well as between the Egalitarian Democracy Index and ESG performance. These insights are valuable for policymakers and corporate leaders, emphasizing the need to consider cultural nuances when developing strategies to enhance sustainability practices.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen