IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/agribz/v35y2019i4p639-656.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The effect of gender diversity on the board of Spanish agricultural cooperatives on returns and debt: An empirical analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Carmen María Hernández‐Nicolás
  • Juan Francisco Martín‐Ugedo
  • Antonio Mínguez‐Vera

Abstract

This paper focuses on gender diversity on the boards of Spanish agricultural cooperatives. Specifically, it examines the effect that gender diversity on the board exerts on returns, debt level, and economic risk. Cooperatives differ significantly from investor‐owned firms because cooperative members are producers, agents, and customers of the cooperatives. In Spain, there is an ongoing debate about the importance of women in business management. Spain is also a pioneer in terms of enacting specific legislation for the social economy. The sample examined includes 672 agricultural cooperatives. The results show that firms with greater female representation on their boards have higher returns and operational risk and lower levels of debt. [EconLit Classifications: J16, J54, Q13].

Suggested Citation

  • Carmen María Hernández‐Nicolás & Juan Francisco Martín‐Ugedo & Antonio Mínguez‐Vera, 2019. "The effect of gender diversity on the board of Spanish agricultural cooperatives on returns and debt: An empirical analysis," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(4), pages 639-656, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:agribz:v:35:y:2019:i:4:p:639-656
    DOI: 10.1002/agr.21608
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/agr.21608
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/agr.21608?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lex Borghans & Bart H. H. Golsteyn & James J. Heckman & Huub Meijers, 2009. "Gender Differences in Risk Aversion and Ambiguity Aversion," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(2-3), pages 649-658, 04-05.
    2. Jeffrey P. Katz, 1997. "Managerial behavior and strategy choices in agribusiness cooperatives," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(5), pages 483-495.
    3. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    4. Lerman, Zvi & Parliament, Claudia, 1991. "Size and industry effects in the performance of agricultural cooperatives," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 6(1), pages 15-29, October.
    5. Jensen, Michael C, 1986. "Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(2), pages 323-329, May.
    6. Stefan Hirsch & Adelina Gschwandtner, 2013. "Profit persistence in the food industry: evidence from five European countries," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 40(5), pages 741-759, December.
    7. Rafat A. M. E. Soboh & Alfons Oude Lansink & Gerard Giesen & Gert van Dijk, 2009. "Performance Measurement of the Agricultural Marketing Cooperatives: The Gap between Theory and Practice," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 31(3), pages 446-469, September.
    8. Rafat A. M. E. Soboh & Alfons Oude Lansink & Gerard Giesen & Gert van Dijk, 2009. "Performance Measurement of the Agricultural Marketing Cooperatives: The Gap between Theory and Practice," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 31(3), pages 446-469.
    9. Ruth Mateos de Cabo & Ricardo Gimeno & María Nieto, 2012. "Gender Diversity on European Banks’ Boards of Directors," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 109(2), pages 145-162, August.
    10. Mariateresa Torchia & Andrea Calabrò & Morten Huse, 2011. "Women Directors on Corporate Boards: From Tokenism to Critical Mass," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 102(2), pages 299-317, August.
    11. Frederick C. Scherr & Timothy F. Sugrue & Janice B. Ward, 1993. "Financing the Small Firm Start-Up: Determinants of Debt Use," Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance, Pepperdine University, Graziadio School of Business and Management, vol. 3(1), pages 17-36, Fall.
    12. Lex Borghans & Bart H.H. Golsteyn & James J. Heckman & Huub Meijers, 2009. "Gender Differences in Risk Aversion and Ambiguity," Working Papers 200903, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    13. Stephen Bear & Noushi Rahman & Corinne Post, 2010. "The Impact of Board Diversity and Gender Composition on Corporate Social Responsibility and Firm Reputation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 97(2), pages 207-221, December.
    14. David G. Barton & Ted C. Schroeder & Allen M. Featherstone, 1993. "Evaluating the feasibility of local cooperative consolidations: A case study," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 9(3), pages 281-294.
    15. Liang, Julienne, 2015. "How fixed mobile usage interact? Does FTTH deployment influence the interaction?," 26th European Regional ITS Conference, Madrid 2015 127157, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    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. Faridzah Jamaluddin & Norman Mohd Saleh & Azizah Abdullah & Mohamat Sabri Hassan & Noradiva Hamzah & Romlah Jaffar & Sarah Aziz Abdul Ghani Aziz & Zaini Embong, 2023. "Cooperative Governance and Cooperative Performance: A Systematic Literature Review," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(3), pages 21582440231, September.

    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. Kuhle Prudence Mnisi & Abdul Latif Alhassan, 2021. "Financial structure and cooperative efficiency: A pecking‐order evidence from sugarcane farmers in Eswatini," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 92(2), pages 261-281, June.
    2. Ingersoll, Alicia R. & Cook, Alison & Glass, Christy, 2023. "A free solo in heels: Corporate risk taking among women executives and directors," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    3. Adeel Mustafa & Abubakr Saeed & Muhammad Awais & Shahab Aziz, 2020. "Board-Gender Diversity, Family Ownership, and Dividend Announcement: Evidence from Asian Emerging Economies," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-20, March.
    4. Donato Masciandaro & Paola Profeta & Davide Romelli, 2016. "Gender and Monetary Policymaking: Trends and Drivers," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 1512, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    5. Maria Lucas-Pérez & Antonio Mínguez-Vera & Juan Baixauli-Soler & Juan Martín-Ugedo & Gregorio Sánchez-Marín, 2015. "Women on the Board and Managers’ Pay: Evidence from Spain," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 129(2), pages 265-280, June.
    6. Theo Benos & Nikos Kalogeras & Martin Wetzels & Ko De Ruyter & Joost M. E. Pennings, 2018. "Harnessing a ‘Currency Matrix’ for Performance Measurement in Cooperatives: A Multi-Phased Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-38, December.
    7. Andreas Seebeck & Julia Vetter, 2022. "Not Just a Gender Numbers Game: How Board Gender Diversity Affects Corporate Risk Disclosure," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 177(2), pages 395-420, May.
    8. Goodell, John W., 2019. "Comparing normative institutionalism with intended rationality in cultural-finance research," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 124-134.
    9. Maria Giuseppina Bruna & Rey Dang & Marie-José Scotto & Aymen Ammari, 2019. "Does board gender diversity affect firm risk-taking? Evidence from the French stock market," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 23(4), pages 915-938, December.
    10. Mateos-Ronco, Alicia & Guzman-Asuncion, Sandra, 2018. "Determinants of financing decisions and management implications: evidence from Spanish agricultural cooperatives," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 21(6), July.
    11. Joanna Tyrowicz & Siri Terjesen & Jakub Mazurek, 2017. "All on board? New evidence on board gender diversity from a large panel of firms," GRAPE Working Papers 5, GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics.
    12. Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh, 2024. "An application of artificial neural networks in corporate social responsibility decision making," Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(1), March.
    13. Thembi Xaba & Nyankomo Marwa & Babita Mathur-Helm, 2018. "Efficiency and Profitability Analysis of Agricultural Cooperatives in Mpumalanga, South Africa," Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies, AMH International, vol. 10(6), pages 1-10.
    14. Zeitun, Rami & Goaied, Mohamed & Refai, Hisham Al, 2022. "Does minority management affect a firm's capital structure? Evidence from Japan," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    15. Jaehong Lee, 2021. "CEO Overconfidence and Voluntary Disclosure of Greenhouse Gas Emissions: With a Focus on the Role of Corporate Governance," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-19, May.
    16. María Consuelo Pucheta‐Martínez & Inmaculada Bel‐Oms & Isabel Gallego‐Álvarez, 2023. "Corporate social responsibility reporting and capital structure: Does board gender diversity mind in such association?," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(4), pages 1588-1600, July.
    17. James J. Cordeiro & Giorgia Profumo & Ilaria Tutore, 2020. "Board gender diversity and corporate environmental performance: The moderating role of family and dual‐class majority ownership structures," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 1127-1144, March.
    18. Ann L. Owen & Judit Temesvary & Andrew Wei, 2021. "Gender and Professional Networks on Bank Boards," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021-021r1, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), revised 23 Aug 2021.
    19. Mehdi Nekhili & Hayette Gatfaoui, 2013. "Are Demographic Attributes and Firm Characteristics Drivers of Gender Diversity? Investigating Women’s Positions on French Boards of Directors," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 118(2), pages 227-249, December.
    20. Helena Isidro & Márcia Sobral, 2015. "The Effects of Women on Corporate Boards on Firm Value, Financial Performance, and Ethical and Social Compliance," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 132(1), pages 1-19, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:wly:agribz:v:35:y:2019:i:4:p:639-656. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1520-6297 .

    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.