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The more, the merrier? Women in top‐management teams and entrepreneurship in established firms

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  • Jacob Lyngsie
  • Nicolai J. Foss

Abstract

Research summary: We study the association between firms' entrepreneurial outcomes and their gender composition. Though highly topical, there is little solid empirical knowledge of this issue, which calls for an inductive approach. We match a paired‐respondent questionnaire survey with population‐wide employer‐employee data, and find evidence that the presence of female top managers is positively related to entrepreneurial outcomes in established firms. Yet, this relation is conditional on the proportion between male and female top managers. Another finding is that the overall proportion of women in the firm's workforce negatively moderates the relation between female top managers and entrepreneurial outcomes. We discuss various mechanisms that can explain these findings, and argue that they are best understood in terms of the dynamics of social categorization. Managerial summary: We investigate how companies benefit from having more women on the top‐management team. We show that beyond a threshold level of female top managers, more women are associated with more entrepreneurial outcomes (more products and services profitably launched). However, this positive effect is weakened in firms that have many women in the workforce. These effects may be explained in terms of the ways employees mentally categorize managers and how this influences their work motivation. We find evidence for such an explanation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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  • Jacob Lyngsie & Nicolai J. Foss, 2017. "The more, the merrier? Women in top‐management teams and entrepreneurship in established firms," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(3), pages 487-505, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:stratm:v:38:y:2017:i:3:p:487-505
    DOI: 10.1002/smj.2510
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    17. Triana, María del Carmen & Richard, Orlando C. & Su, Weichieh, 2019. "Gender diversity in senior management, strategic change, and firm performance: Examining the mediating nature of strategic change in high tech firms," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(7), pages 1681-1693.
    18. Jain, Shalini Sarin & Fernando, Guy D. & Tripathy, Arindam & Bhatia, Sandhya, 2021. "Closing the gender gap in top management teams: An examination of diversity and compensation parity in family and non-family firms," Journal of Family Business Strategy, Elsevier, vol. 12(4).
    19. David Urbano & Andreu Turro & Mike Wright & Shaker Zahra, 2022. "Corporate entrepreneurship: a systematic literature review and future research agenda," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 59(4), pages 1541-1565, December.

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