IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/advacc/v37y2017icp94-102.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does diversity improve profits and shareholder returns? Evidence from top rated companies for diversity by DiversityInc

Author

Listed:
  • Filbeck, Greg
  • Foster, Benjamin
  • Preece, Dianna
  • Zhao, Xin

Abstract

In this study, we examine the relationship between the diversity efforts of firms listed in DiversityInc's list of Top 50 Companies for Diversity and their financial performance. We examine both an announcement effect and the risk-adjusted performance of diverse firms to a matched sample and the S&P 500 index. We find a positive effect related to the announcement of the DiversityInc Top Companies for Diversity list. When examining long-term performance using the risk-adjusted performance of listed companies, DiversityInc firms outperform the S&P 500 index but have performance that is either indistinguishable or inferior to a matched sample. DiversityInc firms exhibit superior return on assets compared to the matched sample, but this difference is explained by differences in firm size. Overall, we find limited support that inclusion in DiversityInc's list of top firms for diversity indicates improved performance over a matched sample.

Suggested Citation

  • Filbeck, Greg & Foster, Benjamin & Preece, Dianna & Zhao, Xin, 2017. "Does diversity improve profits and shareholder returns? Evidence from top rated companies for diversity by DiversityInc," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 94-102.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:advacc:v:37:y:2017:i:c:p:94-102
    DOI: 10.1016/j.adiac.2017.02.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088261101630044X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.adiac.2017.02.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Parrotta, Pierpaolo & Pozzoli, Dario & Pytlikova, Mariola, 2010. "Does Labor Diversity Affect Firm Productivity?," Working Papers 10-12, University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Department of Economics.
    2. Dodd, Peter & Warner, Jerold B., 1983. "On corporate governance : A study of proxy contests," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1-4), pages 401-438, April.
    3. Michael C. Jensen, 1968. "The Performance Of Mutual Funds In The Period 1945–1964," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 23(2), pages 389-416, May.
    4. Adams, Renée B. & Ferreira, Daniel, 2009. "Women in the boardroom and their impact on governance and performance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 291-309, November.
    5. Wu, Meng-Wen & Shen, Chung-Hua, 2013. "Corporate social responsibility in the banking industry: Motives and financial performance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(9), pages 3529-3547.
    6. Barber, Brad M. & Lyon, John D., 1997. "Detecting long-run abnormal stock returns: The empirical power and specification of test statistics," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 341-372, March.
    7. Daehyun Kim & Laura T. Starks, 2016. "Gender Diversity on Corporate Boards: Do Women Contribute Unique Skills?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(5), pages 267-271, May.
    8. Andrea Garnero & Stephan Kampelmann & François Rycx, 2014. "The Heterogeneous Effects of Workforce Diversity on Productivity, Wages, and Profits," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(3), pages 430-477, July.
    9. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    10. George A. Akerlof & Rachel E. Kranton, 2000. "Economics and Identity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(3), pages 715-753.
    11. Goh, Jeremy C & Ederington, Louis H, 1993. "Is a Bond Rating Downgrade Bad News, Good News, or No News for Stockholders?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(5), pages 2001-2008, December.
    12. Kimberly Ellis & Phyllis Keys, 2015. "Workforce diversity and shareholder value: a multi-level perspective," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 191-212, February.
    13. Tate, Geoffrey & Yang, Liu, 2015. "Female leadership and gender equity: Evidence from plant closure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(1), pages 77-97.
    14. Alessandra Cataldi & Stephan Kampelmann & François Rycx, 2011. "Productivity-Wage Gaps Among Age Groups: Does the ICT Environment Matter?," De Economist, Springer, vol. 159(2), pages 193-221, June.
    15. Gul, Ferdinand A. & Srinidhi, Bin & Ng, Anthony C., 2011. "Does board gender diversity improve the informativeness of stock prices?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 314-338, April.
    16. Huang, Jiekun & Kisgen, Darren J., 2013. "Gender and corporate finance: Are male executives overconfident relative to female executives?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(3), pages 822-839.
    17. Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Titman, Sheridan, 1993. "Returns to Buying Winners and Selling Losers: Implications for Stock Market Efficiency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(1), pages 65-91, March.
    18. Gur Huberman & Tomer Regev, 2001. "Contagious Speculation and a Cure for Cancer: A Nonevent that Made Stock Prices Soar," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(1), pages 387-396, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Foster, Benjamin P. & Manikas, Andrew & Preece, Dianna & Kroes, James R., 2021. "Noteworthy diversity efforts and financial performance: Evidence from DiversityInc's top 50," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    2. Tomasz Sosnowski & Anna Wawryszuk-Misztal, 2019. "Diversity on management and supervisory board and accuracy of management earnings forecasts in IPO prospectuses," Ekonomia i Prawo, Uniwersytet Mikolaja Kopernika, vol. 18(3), pages 347-363, September.
    3. Benjamin P. Foster & Andrew S. Manikas & James R. Kroes, 2023. "Which diversity measures best capture public company value?," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(1), pages 236-247, January.
    4. Yana SELIVERSTOVA & Anita PIEROG, 2021. "A Theoretical Study On Global Workforce Diversity Management, Its Benefits And Challenges," CrossCultural Management Journal, Fundația Română pentru Inteligența Afacerii, Editorial Department, issue 1, pages 117-124, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Benjamin Bennett & Isil Erel & Léa H. Stern & Zexi Wang, 2020. "Paid Leave Pays Off: The Effects of Paid Family Leave on Firm Performance," NBER Working Papers 27788, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Greg Filbeck & Dianna Preece & Xin Zhao, 2013. "Top performing banks: the benefits to investors," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 37(4), pages 560-583, October.
    3. Harakeh, Mostafa & Leventis, Stergios & El Masri, Tarek & Tsileponis, Nikolaos, 2023. "The moderating role of board gender diversity on the relationship between firm opacity and stock returns," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(4).
    4. Linnenluecke, Martina K. & Chen, Xiaoyan & Ling, Xin & Smith, Tom & Zhu, Yushu, 2017. "Research in finance: A review of influential publications and a research agenda," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 188-199.
    5. Gambacorta, Leonardo & Pancotto, Livia & Reghezza, Alessio & Spaggiari, Martina, 2022. "Gender diversity in bank boardrooms and green lending: Evidence from euro area credit register data," CEPR Discussion Papers 17650, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Daniel, Kent & Hirshleifer, David & Teoh, Siew Hong, 2002. "Investor psychology in capital markets: evidence and policy implications," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 139-209, January.
    7. Mobbs, Shawn & Tan, Yongxian & Zhang, Shage, 2021. "Female directors: Why are some less informed than others?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    8. Sanjukta Brahma & Agyenim Boateng & Sardar Ahmad, 2023. "Board overconfidence and M&A performance: evidence from the UK," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 60(4), pages 1363-1391, May.
    9. Kiesel, Florian & Ries, Jörg M. & Tielmann, Artur, 2017. "Reprint of “The impact of mergers and acquisitions on shareholders' wealth in the logistics service industry”," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 194(C), pages 261-277.
    10. Sultan Sikandar Mirza & Muhammad Ansar Majeed & Tanveer Ahsan, 2020. "Board gender diversity, competitive pressure and investment efficiency in Chinese private firms," Post-Print hal-02956320, HAL.
    11. Jin-hui Luo & Zeyue Huang & Xue Li & Xiaojing Lin, 2018. "Are Women CEOs Valuable in Terms of Bank Loan Costs? Evidence from China," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 153(2), pages 337-355, December.
    12. Harjoto, Maretno A. & Hoepner, Andreas G.F. & Li, Qian, 2022. "A stakeholder resource-based view of corporate social irresponsibility: Evidence from China," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 830-843.
    13. Clacher, Iain & Garcia Osma, Beatriz & Scarlat, Elvira & Shields, Karin, 2021. "Do commonalities facilitate private information channels? Evidence from common gender and insider trading," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    14. Shoham, Amir & Lee, Sang Mook & Khan, Zaheer & Tarba, Shlomo Y. & Ahammad, Mohammad Faisal, 2020. "The effect of board gender diversity on cross-listing," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    15. Greg Filbeck & Xin Zhao & Matthew Warnaka, 2022. "Glassdoor's best places to work internationally: Are they best for shareholders?," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(4), pages 4350-4363, October.
    16. Greg Filbeck & Dianna Preece, 2003. "Fortune’s Best 100 Companies to Work for in America: Do They Work for Shareholders?," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(5‐6), pages 771-797, June.
    17. Saif Rehman & René Orij & Hashim Khan, 2020. "The search for alignment of board gender diversity, the adoption of environmental management systems, and the association with firm performance in Asian firms," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(5), pages 2161-2175, September.
    18. Kiesel, Florian & Ries, Jörg M. & Tielmann, Artur, 2017. "The impact of mergers and acquisitions on shareholders' wealth in the logistics service industry," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 193(C), pages 781-797.
    19. Jannine Poletti‐Hughes & Beatriz Martínez Garcia, 2022. "Leverage in family firms: The moderating role of female directors and board quality," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(1), pages 207-223, January.
    20. Fang,Sheng & Goh,Chorching & Roberts,Mark & Xu,L. Colin & Zeufack,Albert G., 2020. "Female Business Leaders, Business and Cultural Environment, and Productivity around the World," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9275, The World Bank.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:advacc:v:37:y:2017:i:c:p:94-102. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/advances-in-accounting/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.