The effect of gender diversity in the board of directors
on firm performance in Dutch semi-public health care
companies
Name: Michelle Beuk Student number: 10383859
Specialization: Finance and Organization Subject: Organization
Statement of Originality
This document is written by Student Michelle Beuk who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.
I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.
The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.
1. Abstract
In this study, the effect of gender diversity in the board of directors of semi-public health care companies is examined. It has been opposed that the semi-public health care sector is less
competitive than big corporates. This would result in a more advantageous environment for women, who tend to underperform in competitive situations. This might positively influence board
performance, as it has been stated that cooperation between men and women has a positive effect on aspects like decision making and risk assessing. In this study, firm performance is measured by the return on assets (financial resources) and employee productivity (human resources). However, no significant impact of the inclusion of women on the board of directors on both factors of firm performance have been found. The results of this study cannot provide additional motivation to include women in the board of directors, but neither imply that a men-only board outperforms a board of directors where women are included.
2. Introduction
The board of directors of a company is the responsible organ and manages the overall direction and functioning of the company (Carroll and Buchholtz 2011). Relationships with stakeholders as employees, shareholder and the government are included in the main
responsibilities of the board, as well as controlling the overall daily activities. The board of directors is a well-known topic in daily economic research and has been extensively studied. These studies include for example the effect of incentives, board composition and board independence on firm performance and have been conducted in countries all over the world.
One of the main topics of these studies is the effect of gender differences in board
composition. This focus was encouraged further by the recent changes in government policies and regulations, which for instance include gender diversity quotas that have been implemented in several countries to stimulate the representation of women in the board of directors (Branson 2012). These quotas have different forms but mostly consists of a required percentage (usually 33-50%), period (3-5 years) and certain consequences if a company does not comply (e.g. In Norway,
companies are dissolved). The quotas are present in ten countries e.g. Norway, Spain, France, Iceland and Kenya. In fifteen other countries, additional policies and regulations are implemented to
motivate companies to enhance the diversity in the board of directors (Hughes et al, 2017). These regulations may consist of requiring diversity policies, gender diversity initiatives and the disclosure of the considerations of the nominating committees in nominating processes. The main driver for the implementation of these quotas and regulations seems to be the social justice motives. Countries want to adopt these motivations to stimulate equal opportunities for men and women in society and in this case, the professional environment.
revealed positive effects of gender diversity on a number of different performance measures. For example, Bear et al (2010) found a positive relationship between gender diversity in the board of directors and corporate social responsibility. In addition to this, Campbell and Minguez-Vera (2008) found a positive relationship between the percentage of women on the board and firm value. The results from Ali et al (2014) indicate a positive linear relationship between employee productivity and gender diversity and they imply that a gender-balances board enjoys a mixture of resources that can lead to improving the operating revenue of a company. Several other studies using different
performance measures found a positive relationship between gender diversity and firm performance (Mahadeo et al. 2012; Nguyen and Faff 2006; Srinidhi et al. 2011). In contrast to these studies, a number of researchers exposed negative relationships between the presence of women on the board of directors and firm performance. Adams and Ferreira (2009) found a negative average effect of gender diversity on firm performance. This negative relationship was driven by companies with less takeover defense and thus suggest that holding a gender quota might reduce firm value for well-governed companies. Dobbin and Jung (2011) suggested that gender diversity might influence corporate performance. They suggest that if female board membership raises efficacy, this should be seen in both stock prices and profits. In their research, female directors have negative effects on stock value but not on profit. In addition to this, more studies have been conducted that found a negative relationship between gender diversity and firm performance (Bøhrenand Strøm 2010; Haslam et al. 2010). Another body of research did not find any significant relationship between gender diversity and the performance measures (Carter et al. 2010; Jhunjhunwala and Mishra 2012; Shukeri et al. 2012; Wang and Clift 2009).
Studies on gender differences do not limit themselves to the effect of gender diversity on the board of directors. Presumably also as part of the social justice motive, numerous attempts have been done in trying to explain the so called ‘gender gap’ and the fact that high profile jobs mostly remain to be executed by men (Gunderson, 1981). Whether the gender imbalance in labor markets is measured by wages, career advancement or unemployment rates, the gap remains to exist(Altonji and Blank, 1999; Blau and Kahn, 2000; Bertrand and Hallock, 2001; Azmat et al., 2006). Gneezy et al (2003) have proposed an alternative explanation for the fact that more men execute senior positions. In this research, it has been proposed that ‘women and men differ in their ability or propensity to perform in competitive environments’ (pp. 1050). High profile jobs commonly arise in business cultures that are highly competitive. In addition to this, incentive payments and variable wage schemes are mostly used to define a person’s wage. These competitive aspects of corporate culture may elicit different performance from men and women. In former research it has been found that women tend to underperform if they are involved in a mixed sex tournament in which they have to compete against men, even if the performance of both sexes is similar in noncompetitive
environments. This is most likely the effect of the aversion of women against competitive situations, or alternatively that women feel less competent when they have to compete against men (Gneezy et al, 2013; Gneezy and Rustichini, 2014). It has been demonstrated that women may be absent from competitive environments because they dislike competition, compared to men. Women select themselves out of the competitive environments. This effect has been found, even in situations where women would have a financial benefit if they decided to enter the competitive environment (Niederle and Vesterlund, 2007).
In contrast to the experiments mentioned above, which are conducted in laboratory
experiments, Flory et al (2013) decided to investigate the imbalance in labor markets in an naturally occurring research design. A natural field experiment on job-entry decisions has been run and led to the outcome that women disproportionately shy away from competitive work settings. Yet, there are important factors that influence the gender differences and include whether the job is performed in teams, gender associations related to the position and the job-seekers’ age.
In addition to this research, Reuben et al (2013) conducted experiments in which it has been tested whether and why women are less likely to be selected as leader of a group in competitive environments. They found that men’s overconfidence is the driving force behind the high prevalence of male representation in group leadership. Women seem to underestimate their own abilities in competitive environments and this bias concerning their own performance explained a significant proportion of the lack of female leadership.
The outcomes of the above mentioned studies led to the implication that performance of women overall might be negatively related to their performance in competitive environments. This effect even arises when the women are equally qualified to ‘do the job’, due to underestimation and risk averse behavior.
In this research, the focus will be on gender diversity in the board of directors in the semi-public sector and the effect on firm performance. More specific, the dataset will consist of Dutch semi-public health care companies. It has been decided to focus on the semi-public sector to potentially rule out the competitive environment. In semi-public health care companies, there is no profitability incentive as public funds are used to finance its activities and there are no shareholders to declare to as semi-public health care companies commonly use the legal form ‘foundation’. In addition to this, variable payment schemes are more or less absent in public health care companies as maximum remunerations are set and performance payment structures are prohibited. These semi-public health care companies serve as a metaphor for a less competitive workplace compared to corporate companies. In corporate companies, competitiveness seems to be much more of a factor as profits and shareholder value are taken into account and wage schemes almost always include bonus structures or variable payments.
With this research, it will be tested whether there is a positive effect on the presence and the number of women in the board of directors on firm performance in semi-public health care companies. This non-competitive workplace is expected to rule out the difficulties women face in competitive environments and the underperformance of women that corporate culture induces.
The outcomes of this research contribute to our knowledge of the effect of gender diversity on firm performance in semi-public health care companies. Although former results are mixed and there is not one law that fits every firm, studying the effect of gender diversity in different work fields might help us to obtain a better understanding of the elements that influence either positive or negative effects of gender diversity. Withdrawing the competitive element by conducting this study on semi-public companies, previous findings about underperformance of women related to
corporate competitive culture may be partially confirmed by this research. However, as there is no exogenous variation included in this study, it is nog possible to highlight a causal effect between board diversity and firm performance. The outcomes is this research will be able to indicate solely a correlation. Therefore, this study may serve as preliminary research for further investigation, as it may be a new field of study to focus not only on corporate companies but include the work sector as an explanatory variable. In addition to this, when exogenous variation can be induced, it might even be possible to investigate whether there is a causal relationship between gender diversity on the board and firm performance. When focusing on the societal consequence, the outcomes of this research may further highlight the importance of gender diversity and justify the use of the quotas and regulations that are used nowadays.
3. Hypothesis
I expect to see a positive relationship between of the inclusion of women in the board of public health care companies and the return on assets and employee productivity. As there has been studied that performance difference between men and women fade as they are in a non-competitive situation (Gneezy et al, 2003), it is expected that there is no ability difference between men or women entering the board of directors. The expectation that there will be a positive effect of gender diversity is based on former research pointing out the importance of board diversity in decision making (Hillman et al. 2000; van der Walt and Ingley 2003), integrating different perspectives (Rogelberg and Rumery 1996) and a more detail focused (Stendardi et al. 2006) and risk-averse environment (Graham et al. 2002). The integration of the qualities of both female and male board members and their distinctive abilities and perspectives may serve a company in critically weighing the risk and benefits associated with important decisions.
The hypotheses will be the following:
H0: It is expected that there is no relationship between gender diversity and firm performance and so β1 = 0
H1: It is expected that there is a positive relationship between gender diversity and firm performance and so β1 > 0
4. Research method
In this research, a regression model will be set up in which the number of women and the presence of a woman on the board of directors of semi-public health care companies will be tested to have an effect on firm performance. On zorgvisie.nl, it is possible to oversee the 100 biggest Dutch companies in the semi-public health care sector. It has been decided to use this list as the dataset, because these companies seem the most relevant as they have the most comparisons with corporate companies in the business world on which almost all known literature is based. The data of these 100 semi-public companies will be collected from the annual reports on jaarverslagenzorg.nl, a website from which I can obtain all annual reports from companies in the Dutch semi-public health care companies. In addition I will use the company’s website or other public sources if needed (Orbis, for example).
Firm performance will be measured by two dependent variables. The first is operational performance, which will be measured by earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT), per full time equivalent (FTE). This dependent variable will account for employee productivity. The second will be the return on assets (ROA) (Ali et al, 2014). The latter has been chosen because being profitable is one of the main drivers of public health care companies to ensure its existence, which is in contrast to corporate companies, where also e.g. market capitalization and shareholder value may be taken into account when firm and board performance are determined. The two measures can provide insight into how board diversity impacts an organization’s use of its human resources (employee productivity) and its financial resources (return on assets).
The regression models will include the main explanatory variable ‘presence of women on the board of directors (dummy)’, ‘number of women on the board of directors’ or ‘percentage of women on the board of directors’. The dependent variables will be return on assets (ROA) and employee productivity (EBIT/FTE). Operating revenue will be divided by number of employees in full time equivalent (FTE). Return on assets will be calculated as profit or loss before tax divided by total asset value (Ali et al, 2012). I will perform six regressions which will consist of three regressions based on ROA in which ROA will be regressed on either number of women in the board and the actual
the percentage of women on the board and a control variable, which will be the squared percentages to test for a quadratic relationship. The latter regression is implemented based on a former study (Hoogendorn et al, 2013), in which an inverted U-shape found between sales and share of women on the board of directors. This effect can be detected by adding the squared percentages. This inverted U-shape implicates that the relationship of women on the board and output is positive at first, until an optimal gender mix is reached, and after that declines. The same regressions will be done for the EBIT/FTE measure, which will add up to six regressions in total.
Furthermore, I will include dummy variables to correct for the category in which the
company is attributed. On jaarverslagenzorg.nl, the companies are placed in five different categories and it has been decided to implement these categories as dummy variables in the regression model as activities might have a significant impact on the use of human- and financial resources. As can be imagined, a hospital has a different use of its resources (expensive machinery and expensive staff) than in caretaking of (mentally) disabled, which can be done in-house (low assets) and with untrained staff (low wages). The companies are divided in the following five categories’:
• (Academic) Hospitals -> Hospital • Mental healthcare -> Mental • Nursing and (home) care -> Nursing
• Caretaking of (mentally) disabled -> Disabled • Mixed category ->Mixed
In the regressions considering the number of women on the board, I will also include a control variable ‘’Board Size’’.
To avoid perfect multicollinearity, the regression model will exclude one of the control variables for sector. This will lead to the equations stated below:
Return on Assets = β0 + β1*number of women on the board of directors + β2*Mental + β3*Nursing + β4*Disabled + β5*Mixed + β6*board size + ε
Return on Assets = β0 + β1*presence of women on the board of directors + β2*Mental + β3*Nursing + β4*Disabled + β5*Mixed + ε
Return on Assets = β0 + β1*percentage of women on the board of directors + β2*Mental +
β3*Nursing + β4*Disabled + β5*Mixed + β6*(percentage of women on the board of directors) ² + ε EBIT / FTE = β0 + β1* number of women on the board of directs + β2*Mental + β3*Nursing + β4*Disabled + β5*Mixed + β6*board size + ε
EBIT / FTE = β0 + β1* presence of women on the board of directors + β2*Mental + β3*Nursing + β4*Disabled + β5*Mixed + ε
EBIT / FTE = β0 + β1*percentage of women on the board of directors + β2*Mental + β3*Nursing + β4*Disabled + β5*Mixed + β6*(percentage of women on the board of directors) ² + ε
5. Results
The original data set consisted of the 100 biggest Dutch semi-public health care companies (n=100) and their annual results from book year 2015. As the explanatory variable, I used the composition of the board of directors according to gender. The (last) names of the board of directors could be derived from the annual report and in addition, the firm’s website or simply using google helped me to determine the gender.
Six firms have been taken out of the original dataset because they did not exist anymore or merged with others, which is a common feature nowadays in big hospitals in Holland due to drastic cuts in the (semi) public health care since the start of 2015.
Furthermore, nine firms have been taken out of the original dataset because their board of directors existed of only one board member, which does not induces any cooperating advantages. This research has been based on the theoretical ground that the inclusion of women in the board of directors may induce a positive effect amongst board members of different gender. Positive effects in a one member board clearly only depends on personal traits which may enhance firm performance instead of cooperation between men and women on the same board.
The total amount of data points in my research ended up to be 100-6-9 = 85 data points To avoid any bias based on the difference in activity, is has been decided to implement these categories as dummy variables in the regression model. The descriptive statistics of the sector dummies confirm the assumption that there is a difference in ROA and EBIT/FTE depending on activities. The mean of the hospital category (ROA = 0.0182; EBITFTE = 4695.11) differs greatly from the mean of the mixed category (ROA = 0.0063; EBITFTE = 1367.02)
Table 1. Descriptive statistics of the different sectors of Dutch semi-public health care companies
The regressions of ROA and EBIT/FTE on the actual presence of women on the board of directors have been conducted by including a dummy, in which the companies will get either a 1 (= there is a woman included in the board of directors) or a 0 (= no women is included in the board of directors, the entire board consists of men). From the 85 companies, there were 50 that had at least one female board member and the remaining 35 consisted of a men-only boa
ROA Hospital (1) Mental (2) Nursing (3) Disabled (4) Mixed (5)
Mean .018181137 .012471 .015636596 .002271 .006347959
Standard
Error .00245184 .003575 .010620136 .013243 .007538373
Standard
Deviation .016263669 .011304 .035223006 .047749 .019944661
EBIT/FTE Hospital (1) Mental (2) Nursing (3) Disabled (4) Mixed (5)
Mean 4695.114413 2875.594 1842.580085 1429.39 1367.024908 Standard Error 455.838003 413.1331 784.1860499 678.1815 606.1486851 Standard deviation 3023.687242 1306.442 2600.850893 2445.218 1603.718678 Count 44 10 11 13 7
Table 2. The effect of the inclusion of women on the board of directors on return on assets (ROA) and employee productivity (EBIT/FTE).
Independent
variables ROA/Number of women EBITFTE/Number of women ROA/Women on board EBITFTE/Women on Board ROA/Percentage of women EBITFTE/Percentage of women
NWoB .0015 (.0052) -297.78 (527.67) BoardSize .0008 (.0039) 312.67 (398.77) WoB .0034 (.0061) 35.59 (622.57) PoW -.0099 (.0302) 2098.95 (3062.33) PoW² -.0059 (.0463) -4622.60 (4694.85) Mental -.0145* (.0088) -3097.08*** (892.66) -.0157* (.0083) -3263.36*** (849.04) -.0169* (.0083) -3247.91*** (847.27) Nursing -.0051 (.0096) -1688.99 (1017.93) -.0061 (.0092) -1888.03* (984.61) -.0063 (.0093) -1892.01* (987.61) Disabled -.0016 (.0092) -2741.88*** (937.66) -.0021 (.0089) -2847.68*** (909.56) -.0022 (.0090) -2899.36*** (907.19) Mixed -.0113 (.0110) -3479.64*** (1118.17) -.0110 (.0108) -3319.08*** (1104.47) -.0110 (.0110) -3432.86*** (1105.62) Number of observations 85 85 85 85 85 85 R-squared 0.0547 0.2519 0.0561 0.2450 0.0554 0.2566
* A significance of 10% is marked by an asterisk * (5% = **; 1% = ***)
From the data analysis follows that there is no significant effect of the number of women in the board of directors on either the return on assets (p = 0.384) or the employee productivity (p = 0.287) at a 10% significance level. This works both ways, as the number of women does not have a positive effect but neither has a negative effect on the use of the financial and human resources
In addition to this, there is also no significant effect found of the presence of women in the board of directors on either the return on assets (p = 0.288) or the employee productivity (p = 0.478) at a 10% significance level. The presence of women does not have a positive effect but neither has a negative effect on the use of the financial and human resources.
My final regression which included the quadratic control variable to test for a u-shaped effect also did not find any significant effect on return on assets (p=0.372) or employee productivity (p = 0.248). The effect of the number of women and the presence of women on the ROA are both positive yet insignificant and are respectively β = .0015 and β = .0034. Although it is not a significant effect, increasing the number of women tend to have a slightly negative effect on EBIT/FTE (β = -297.87), while this effect is positive and much smaller when only the presence of women on the board is taken into account (β = 35.59).
In the ROA regressions, only the control sector ‘’Mental’’ does have a significant effect (p<0.10) on the dependent variable. In the regressions of EBIT/FTE, all sector control variables do have a
significant effect on the regression (p<0.01) except ‘’Nursing’’, which only shows significance (p<0.10) in the EBITFTE/WoB regression and EBITFTE/PoW regression.
6. Discussion
The main objective of this research was to gather further insight in the way gender diversity in the board of directors affects firm performance. In this case, it has been chosen to focus on the semi-public sector, as this might have ruled out the proxy of ‘’competitiveness’’. About this
competitiveness it is know that women tend to avoid it and might underperform when they have to perform in competitive environments. It was expected that a less competitive environment could have brought the ‘best of both worlds together’, as it has been found in former research that board diversity enhances decision making, integrating different perspectives, induces a risk averse
environment and a more detailed focus. The integration of the qualities of both female and male board members and their perspectives may serve a company in critically weighing the risk and benefits associated with important decisions that diversity in a board of directors might enhance
However, the results of this research show no significant results. Neither the number of women nor the actual presence of a woman in the board of directors of the semi-public health care companies has a positive effect on the return on assets or the EBIT per full time equivalent. In addition to this, neither the number of women nor the presence of a woman on the board of directors has a negative effect on both dependent variables. These results of this research implicate that there is no significant effect of gender diversity on firm performance. These findings are in line with former research that also did not find any significant effect of gender diversity in firm
performance (Carter et al. 2010; Jhunjhunwala and Mishra 2012; Shukeri et al. 2012; Wang and Clift 2009).
This research has a number of limitations. At first, because of shortage in time, the dataset of this research was rather small to conduct a full size, strong statistical analysis. In the future it might valuable to re-run this research with a bigger and more extensive data-set, in which even a
longitudinal research design can be used. In this longitudinal research design, data points from multiple years can be taken into account and also focus on changes in diversity and performance over time, which provides stronger evidence regardless the outcome.
Second, the working culture in the semi-public sector and the assumed ‘lack of competitiveness’ might be wrongly interpreted. It is not yet tested whether the low level of competitiveness is in fact the case in the semi-public sector. In addition to this, there may be other sector related aspects that influenced the regression that are unknown, at least in this research.
Third, it has to be questioned whether the opposed regression model measures the right variables regarding the semi-public sector. In this research, return on assets is used as a proxy for performance based on financial resources and EBIT/FTE is used as a proxy for performance based on human resources. However, it remains questionable whether these measurement are proper proxy’s in the semi-public sector, as there is supposed to be no profitability incentive. Further research can benefit from including different dependent variables such as customer- or employee satisfaction test, which are commonly performed in Dutch semi-public health care companies.
Furthermore, it has not been possible to take all variables into account that might have had an impact on the regression model. Age is one of the main variables that I could not include in the model because of the difficulty to gather birth dates through the publically available sources. Simpson et al (2015) conducted a research on the S&P 1500 companies on the age of women on the board of directors and found that women on the board tend to be younger than male directors by 4 to 5 years. Bertrand et al (2014) did find similar results in Norway, where the average age of women on the board was 3 to 4 years lower than their male opposites. Although the business case for board age diversity has not been attractive to many research, the small amount that did also found mixed results (similarly to gender diversity). For instance, Mahadeo et al. (2012) conducted a research about the effect of board age and firm performance and their findings indicate a positive relationship between board age and return on assets. Complementary, a low average age of the members of the
board (which implies high age diversity as most members of the board are of senior age) has been linked to higher market to book ratio (Bonn et al. 2004). There are also studies in which board age diversity does not have any significant relationship with firm performance measured by earnings per share (Jhunjhunwala and Mishra, 2012) or return on assets and equity (Bonn et al. 2004). In contrast to this, Ali et al (2014) conducted a research in which it has been shown that there is a negative linear relationship between age diversity and return on assets. Due to this limited number of
research it remains yet unclear if board age diversity has a positive, negative or neutral effect on firm performance. However, there is some evidence that the average age of women on the board of directors is significantly lower than the average age of male directors. Leaving out age as a control variable may have had a negative effect on the reliability and strength of the used regression model.
Other examples of variables that are not included in the model are ethnic/racial diversity in board members. Some of the variance in return on assets and employee productivity can be attributed to racial diversity of board members. It has to be taken in to account that the level of ethnic/racial diversity on Dutch board of directors’ is very limited, so this factor might be considered as negligible. Another variable might have been corporate culture in Holland, as most of the referred studied are not conducted in the Netherlands. Unique aspects of the Dutch corporate culture might have had an effect on the findings in this study.
This research might serve as a sample for further research in which the above mentioned limitations can be taken into account to increase the power of the study. However, it has to be kept in mind that this research does not show any causal relationship, but has been done to investigate whether there exists a correlation between gender diversity and firm performance. Exogenous variation on board composition must be included in the model to be able to say that there might be a causal relationship between gender diversity and firm performance.
7. Conclusion
This research contributes to our knowledge about the impact of gender diversity on a firm’s use of its financial and human resources. The outcomes implicate that it there is neither a positive nor a negative effect of the inclusion of women on the board of directors on return on assets or EBIT per full time equivalent of Dutch semi-public health care companies. The results add op to numerous studies that have been done on board diversity and confirm the presumption that gender diversity does not improve performance. These results can help to reconcile some of the mixed findings in past research on gender diversity on the board of directors. Furthermore, this research can contribute to our understanding and valuation of the contemporary topic of women quotas. Unfortunately, the results of this thesis cannot provide additional motivation to include women in the board of directors, but neither imply that a men-only board outperforms a board of directors where women are present.
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