CEO gender and SMEs innovativeness: evidence for Spanish businesses

This paper analyses the role of gender of the chief executive officer (CEO) on the propensity to introduce innovations using a sample of 1405 Spanish small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). We examine whether there are significant differences between female- and male-led businesses in terms of their propensity to innovate, and whether these differences may be explained by factors related to the attributes of the CEO concerning risk tolerance, self-confidence, education level and cooperative behaviour. In particular, this study tests if the linkages between these managerial attributes and the propensity to innovate are influenced by the gender of the CEO. Using a multivariate probit model (triprobit), we further investigate the role of gender on the CEO decision to simultaneously introduce product, process and organisational innovations. Our main results indicate that there are not significant differences in the propensity to introduce innovations between male- and female-run businesses when considering innovation at an aggregated level, that is, innovating in any of the three types of innovations considered. However, we obtain a higher propensity of male CEOs to introduce process innovations, as compared to their female counterparts. No significant differences by gender are found for product and organisational innovations. Additionally, results of the multivariate probit model indicate that the three innovation decisions are interdependent and should be jointly analysed. This study contributes to the scant literature regarding gender impact on firm’s innovativeness with novel empirical evidence for SMEs.