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The Glass Pyramid: Informal Gender Status Hierarchy on Boards

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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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Notes

  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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Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this manuscript  were presented at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Orlando 2013; the Strategic Management Conference, Madrid 2014; the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu 2014; and the International Association for Chinese Management Research (IACMR), Hangzhou 2016, and the Easter Academy of Management International Conference, Dubrovnik 2019. We would like to thank John Child, Gerry McNamara, Toyah Miller, Chris Rider, Weiwen Li, and the participants of these conferences for their helpful comments. Jigao Zhu is grateful for the support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Approval No. 71472042, 71772037) and Beijing Social Science Foundation (Approval No. 18GLC047).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Naveen Jindal School of Management, University of Texas at Dallas, 800 West Campbell, SM 43, Richardson, TX, 75080, USA

    Lívia Markóczy

  2. Department of Marketing Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Robert J. Manning School of Business, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 220A, 72 University Ave., Lowell, MA, 01854, USA

    Sunny Li Sun

  3. Business School, University of International Business and Economics, Chaoyang, Beijing, 100029, China

    Jigao Zhu

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Table 5 Variable definitions
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Markóczy, L., Sun, S.L. & Zhu, J. The Glass Pyramid: Informal Gender Status Hierarchy on Boards. J Bus Ethics 168, 827–845 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04247-z

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