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Sentry eyes? Women directors and corporate penalties

Author

Listed:
  • Muhammad Azeem Qureshi

    (OsloMet - Oslo Metropolitan University)

  • Ammar Ali Gull

    (PULV - Pôle Universitaire Léonard de Vinci)

  • Tanveer Ahsan

    (ESC [Rennes] - ESC Rennes School of Business)

Abstract

The ethical role of women directors is the source of increasing scholarly interest. This study investigates the impact of women directors on corporate misconduct using a dataset of U.S. firms listed between 2002 and 2019. It reveals a significantly negative association between women board directors and corporate misconduct. This association is robust to alternate proxies and regression techniques accounting for potential endogeneity. This study finds that an increase in the proportion of women directors by one standard deviation decreases corporate penalties amount by approximately 1.911%. It also notes that the impact of women directors on corporate misconduct is significant when the board has at least three women and is mainly influenced by independent, rather than executive, women directors. Moreover, the relationship between women directors and corporate misconduct is driven by governance quality, external monitoring, and industry nature. Overall, the investigation indicates that the presence of women directors provides ‘sentry eyes' to corporate boards and reduces corporate misconduct. These findings contribute to the continuing debate on the role of women directors and board diversity and have implications for devising effective corporate governance mechanisms.

Suggested Citation

  • Muhammad Azeem Qureshi & Ammar Ali Gull & Tanveer Ahsan, 2024. "Sentry eyes? Women directors and corporate penalties," Post-Print hal-04844672, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04844672
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2024.144297
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04844672v1
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