Nonprofits need dedicated people to meet the mission of the organization and to address the social and societal conditions they were established to address. How are nonprofit organizations cultivating the next generation of leaders? With five generations of workers in the workplace, the field for new, nonprofit, board-level volunteers is large. However, research shows that young professionals and marginalized racial minorities are underrepresented or not represented in this area. Why is this our current reality and what is hindering the service of these leaders on nonprofit boards? This dissertation examines the role of representation in generational and racial terms on the board of directors of nonprofit organizations in South Carolina. / Business Administration/Human Resource Management

My dissertation consists of three chapters which explores various aspects of executive incentives. In the first chapter, I examine the relation between executive equity pay and stock returns. By compensating CEOs and CFOs differently, shareholders can create incentive conflicts between the firms’ top two managers that potentially affects shareholder wealth. On the one hand, incentive conflict potentially benefits shareholders by improving information exchange and establishing checks and balances in decisions made jointly by the CEO and CFO but alternatively, can harm shareholders by increasing risk through impeding the decision-making processes. I examine the relation between CEO-CFO incentive conflict and stock returns. The analysis indicates that an investor who routinely buy firms with the least incentive conflict and shorts firms with the greatest incentive conflict between CEO and CFOs will outperform the market by 475 basis points per year. I investigate whether risk, firm performance, or market inefficiency explain the excess returns and provide evidence that shareholders demand higher returns for bearing risk associated with CEO-CFO incentive similarities. Next, I explore the impact of executive incentives on bondholder wealth through looking at bond yields. Firms compensate managers to maximize shareholder value, yet these same incentives affect bondholder risk. I investigate the relation between executive equity pay and the cost of debt. My findings indicate a “u-shaped” relation between bond yields and equity pay. These results are consistent with the notion that bondholders prefer a moderate amount of executive equity pay and above or below that level, bondholders increase yields to protect their interests. Instrumenting equity pay using CEO heritage, I find support for a curvilinear relation. These findings suggest that moderate levels of equity pay mitigate the agency costs between firm shareholders and bondholders. Finally, I study the affect of board gender diversity on CEO and director compensation. Females occupy only about 12% of director positions on corporate boards. I find that boards with more female’s onboard tend to give CEOs larger fractions of equity in their compensation packages while incentivizing directors with lower fractions of equity pay. This evidence is consistent with the notion that female board members are superior monitors yet also possess greater risk-aversion than male board members. / Business Administration/Finance

Board gender diversity has been on the corporate agenda for several years, despite numerous gender diversity initiatives around the EU-Member States, women remain underrepresented in the boardroom. There is an intense debate and the problem is frequently raised and discussed by politicians, journalists, shareholders and investors. The thesis examines if gender diversity in the boardroom has any significant effects on firm performance and stock volatility based on 318 firm-year observations with firms listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, Copenhagen Stock Exchange and Helsinki Stock Exchange from 2013 to 2015. The authors find no significant relationship between gender diversified board and firm performance for the overall sample at any conventional level. However, the authors find a positive and statistically significant relationship between gender diversified board and firm performance for only Swedish firms, measured by Tobin’s q. Furthermore, the empirical findings from the relationship between board gender diversity and stock volatility using 1 272 firm-quarter observations, are statistical significant and shows that firms with high gender diversified board have lower stock volatility compared to firms with low gender diversified board.

Företag har sedan lång tid tillbaka frivilligt redovisat hållbarhetsinformation och idag finns det, inom EU, regler att alla större företag ska redovisa en hållbarhetsrapport. Utvecklingen stannar inte här och från år 2023 kan lagen om obligatorisk hållbarhetsrapportering komma att gälla alla börsnoterade bolag. Hållbarhet är därför ett fortsatt växande fenomen. Samtidigt blir jämställdhetsfrågan alltmer aktuell. Som en respons på detta har frågan gällande om kvinnliga styrelsemedlemmar kan ha någon påverkan på hållbarhetsarbete växt fram. Ytterligare en konsekvens av att jämställdhet är viktigt är att vissa länder infört könskvoteringslag i bolagsstyrelser. Huvudfrågan och syftet med studien är att undersöka om andelen kvinnor i en bolagsstyrelse har någon påverkan gällande prestation inom CSR i Norden. Vidare adresseras den effekt reglerad könskvotering kan ha på sambanet. Studien antar en deduktiv ansats där sekundära data samlats in. Studiens resultat påvisar att andelen kvinnor i styrelsen har en positiv effekt på företagets hållbarhetsarbete i Norden. Studiens slutsats är därför att företag genom att öka andelen kvinnor i bolagsstyrelsen kan öka företagets prestation inom CSR. Såväl i stort samt inom dess olika dimensioner; miljö, socialt samt bolagsstyrning. För företag som befinner sig i ett land utan kvoteringslag visar det sig att detta samband fortsatt gäller. För länder med lagstadgad kvoteringslag uppmärksammas dock ingen effekt. / Companies have for a long time voluntarily reported sustainability information and today, within the EU, there are regulations that all major companies must report a sustainability report. The development does not end here and from year 2023, the law on mandatory sustainability reporting may apply to all listed companies. Sustainability is therefore a continuing growing phenomenon. At the same time, the issue of gender equality is becoming increasingly relevant. In response to this, the question of whether female board members may have any impact on sustainability work has emerged. Another consequence of the fact that gender equality is important is that some countries have introduced gender quotas laws on company boards. The main question and purpose of the study is to investigate whether the proportion of women on a company board has any impact on performance within CSR in the Nordic region. Furthermore, the effect regulated quota law can have on the connection is addressed. The study assumes a deductive approach with secondary data obtained. The results of the study prove that the proportion of women on the board has a positive effect on the company's sustainability work in the Nordic region. The study's conclusion is therefore that by increasing the proportion of women on the company board, companies can increase the company's performance within CSR. Both in general and within its various dimensions; environment, social and corporate governance. For companies located in a country without a quota law, it turns out that this connection still applies. For countries with a statutory quota law, however, no effect is noticed.

Purpose: Firm innovation is relevant in the fast paced business world. Recent years, research on board diversity has found that demographic and cognitive diversity have an impact on innovation, however this research is still inconclusive. To contribute to the research this thesis introduces informal hierarchy as a moderating variable to investigate if this can explain the previous contradictory findings.  Theoretical perspective: By using concepts from resource dependence theory, upper echelons theory, and behavioral theory, five hypotheses were formulated and tested.  Method: For board diversity Blau’s index was used, innovation was defined as an index of strategic change and informal hierarchy was measured as the dispersion of rank within the board, through the gini coefficient. 186 Swedish publicly listed limited liability firms were analyzed. Findings: The results provided evidence that neither demographic nor cognitive board diversity impacts innovation and informal hierarchy does not have a moderating role on that relationship. However, the findings suggest a direct relationship between informal hierarchy and innovation. Another finding suggests that board size and informal hierarchy separately has a negative impact on innovation, however when both board size and informal hierarchy is present there is a slightly positive effect on innovation.

This master thesis is focused on an analysis of the impact of corporate board diversity on firm performance using evidence from the Czech Republic. Return on assets, EBIT margin, EBITDA margin, and net profit margin were used as the performance measures. Three types of board diversity were examined in this thesis - gender, nationality, and age. Gender and nationality diversity were both represented by the percentage of women or foreigners on board, and by a dummy variable indicating the presence of women or a foreigner on board. The age diversity was measured by the average age of all board members. Some additional control variables were included in the models such as firm age, firm size, liquidity, etc. Our research is using data from 114 Czech enterprises between the years 2010 and 2018. The fixed-effects or the random-effects method was used to determine the relationship between board diversity and firm performance. The results show that there is a significant and positive relationship between the presence of women on board and firm performance. The average age of board members has a significant negative effect on all dependent variables. Nationality diversity has a mixed effect on firm performance. JEL Classification D22, G32, G34, J15, J16 Keywords Board diversity, firm performance,...

Drawing on the notion of faultlines – a hypothetical dividing line that splits a group into two or more subgroups based on the alignment of one or more individual attributes – this thesis proposes a new approach to the measurement and assessment of board diversity to understand how high(er) performing boards can be built i.e., the multi-dimensional diversity index (MDI). The proposed MDI captures the joint effect of differences in director attributes at four diversity levels for 26,743 directors, namely: (i) surface (or baseline); (ii) identity; (iii) demographic; and (iv) meso-level. The current study uses three-stage least squares (3SLS) with a panel of 3,357 FTSE All-Share index non-financial companies from 2005 to 2018. To this end, a key implication of this study – and by extension, the proposed MDI – is that it challenges the conventional notion that boards are improved ‘enough’ by focusing on the micro-dimension and increasing stand-alone diversity attributes, such as gender. Collectively, this study’s results suggest that a well-diversified board incentivises managers to disclose more information on social and environmental activities in contrast to firms with an extreme faultline score. The results show that highly effective boards with a moderate faultline score at meso-level diversity (e.g., identity, information, and non-demographic attributes) lead to better accounting profitability, corporate value, and market-based performance. Remarkably, the present study finds that nationality diversity per se positively impacts corporate performance; in contrast, the dominance of male directors hinders firm performance significantly.

Syfte: Studien genomförs i syfte att undersöka om det finns ett samband mellan BGD (Board Gender Diversity) och total CSP (Corporate Social Performance) samt mellan BGD och miljödimensionen respektive den sociala dimensionen.   Metod: I studien antas en positivistisk forskningsfilosofi med hypotetiskt-deduktiv ansats. Två urval med olika bolagssystem undersöks. Totalt undersöks 403 europeiska bolag. 121 bolag med dualistiskt bolagssystem och 282 bolag med monistiskt bolagssystem. Studiens kvantitativa forskningsstrategi formas utifrån en longitudinell design vilken implementerats mellan åren 2008-2017. All data samlades in via Thomson Reuters Datastream och analyserades sedan i SPSS.   Resultat & slutsats: Studien finner ett signifikant positivt samband mellan BGD och total CSP samt mellan BGD och miljödimensionen respektive den sociala dimensionen. Företag med högre BGD tycks ha större benägenhet att investera i CSR. hållbarhetsprestation. Sambandet påvisas inom såväl det dualistiska som det monistiska bolagssystemet. BGD:s påverkanseffekt är dock starkare inom det monistiska bolagssystemet.   Examensarbetets bidrag: Med studien erhålls ny kunskap om relationen mellan BGD och total CSP samt mellan BGD och miljödimensionen samt den sociala dimensionen. Studien är bland de första att göra en jämförelse mellan det dualistiska och det monistiska bolagssystemet. Resultatet är relevant med hänsyn till att det ställs allt högre krav på företag att agera hållbart samt den pågående debatten om huruvida EU bör införa obligatorisk könskvotering i styrelser.     Förslag till fortsatt forskning: Ytterligare forskning på land- och branschnivå behövs då sambandet kan skilja sig åt mellan de olika länderna och branscherna, och således påverka logiken bakom obligatorisk könskvotering. Framtida forskning föreslås även inkludera det tredje bolagssystemet, mixed board structure. Vidare ges förslaget att titta närmre på företagsrisken och dess betydelse inom olika bolagssystem, dels med avseende på företagens hållbarhetsprestation, men även med avseende på BGD. Slutligen föreslås framtida forskning undersöka de enskilda CSP-dimensionerna närmre i syfte att utröna vad som kan ligga bakom BGD:s större inverkan på den sociala dimensionen. / Aim: The study is carried out in order to investigate whether there is a link between BGD (Board Gender Diversity) and total CSP (Corporate Social Performance) as well as between BGD and the environmental and social dimension respectively.   Method: In this study we adopt a positivist research philosophy with a hypothetical-deductive approach. Two samples with different board systems are studied. 403 European companies in total are studied. 121 companies with a two-tier board system and 282 companies with a one-tier board system. The quantitative research strategy is based on a longitudinal design implemented between 2008-2017. All data was collected through Thomson Reuters Datastream and then analyzed using SPSS.   Result & Conclusions: The study finds a significant positive relationship between BGD and total CSP as well as between BGD and the environmental dimension and the social dimension respectively. Companies with higher BGD seems to be more likely to invest in CSR. The relationship is found within the two-tier board system as well as the one-tier board system. However, the impact of BGD is stronger within the one-tier board system.   Contribution of the thesis: The study provides new knowledge about the relationship between BGD and total CSP as well as between BGD and the environmental dimension and the social dimension. The study is among the first to make a comparison between the two-tier board system and the one-tier board system. The result is relevant in view of the increasing demands on companies to act sustainably as well as the ongoing debate on whether the EU should introduce mandatory gender quotas on boards.   Suggestions for future research: Further research at country and industry level is needed as the relationship may differ between different countries and industries, thus affecting the logic behind mandatory gender quotas. Future research is also proposed to include the third board system, mixed board structure. Furthermore, the proposal to look more closely at the corporate risk and its importance within various board systems, partly with regard to the companies’ sustainability performance, but also with regard to BGD, is given. Finally, it is proposed that future research could investigate the individual CSP dimensions more closely in order to determine what may be behind BGDs greater impact on the social dimension.

Jämförbarhet i hållbarhetsrapporten är en nödvändighet för att informationen ska vara användbar för användarna. För att främja jämförbar information ska svenska företag följa hållbarhetslagen som bygger på EU-direktivet om hållbarhetsrapportering. Till sin hjälp kan företagen tillämpa internationella frivilliga ramverk som exempelvis Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). I och med att det finns ett flertal frivilliga ramverk att tillämpa kan företagen välja ifall dem vill följa något ramverk, med det utgör inget krav, för att uppfylla hållbarhetslagen. Detta utrymme av frivillighet bidrar till den stora variation i antalet resultatindikatorer som företagen lämnar upplysningar om i hållbarhetsrapporten, vilket gör att informationen inte blir jämförbar. Denna studie vill bidra med kunskap till forskningsfältet genom att (1) kartlägga jämförbarheten i hållbarhetsrapporter i form av hur utförligt företagen noterade på Stockholmsbörsen Large Cap tillämpar resultatindikatorer till rapporteringskravets kategorier och (2) förklara och analysera sambandet mellan företagens branschtillhörighet, företagens andel kvinnor i styrelsen och utförlighetsnivån i hållbarhetsrapporter som omfattas av hållbarhetslagen. För att besvara studiens syfte genomfördes en kvantitativ innehållsanalys av samtliga företag som uppfyllde kriterierna för hållbarhetsrapportering och GRI:s ramverk på Stockholmsbörsen Large Cap. Resultatet visade att båda sambanden var relativt svaga. Sambandet för företagens branschtillhörighet visade sig något starkare jämfört med andelen kvinnor i styrelsen. Det tyder på att det finns andra underliggande faktorer som påverkar jämförbarheten i hållbarhetsrapporten. / The comparability in the sustainability report is a necessity to serve its main purpose, which is to be useful for the stakeholders. To encourage comparable information in the sustainability report, Swedish companies must comply with the national sustainability law, which is based on the EU directive of sustainability reporting. To comply with the national sustainability law companies can apply international voluntary frameworks such as Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), but there is no imperative requirement. All the voluntary frameworks may contribute to the observed differences of indicators disclosed in the sustainability reports, which makes the information not comparable. This study contributes to the field of research by (1) mapping the comparability in the sustainability reports of firms listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange Large Cap by investigating the level of completeness for the reporting requirements categories and (2) explain and analyse the correlation between the company´s sector, board diversity and the level of completeness of firms that are covered by the national sustainability law. Therefore, a quantity content analysis was conducted on all companies in our sample. The findings display a weak relationship between the investigated variables. This suggest that there are other underlying factors that may affect the comparability in the sustainability reports.

The South African economic landscape changed for ever after the first democratic election of 1994. The change heralded an era of inclusion, the economic landscape became open to people from all races, whereas before economic power was centralised in the hands of a minority group due to Apartheid legislation. Exploring the relationship of diversity of board members on the corporate governance of small, micro and medium enterprises (SMME’s) in South Africa has become imperative. Understanding the relationship, if any, which exists can aid SMME’s in board selection and corporate governance alike. Data for the study was collected through a self-enumerated questionnaire completed electronically and followed-up by interviews with heads of boards surveyed. Both the questionnaire and the interviews focussed on corporate governance, which included different components of governance such as the general principles of governance followed in the enterprise, the stakeholder focus exerted by the board of directors and the functioning of the board of directors. This resulted in a score for the enterprise which can be expressed as a percentage. This governance indicator was related to questions on the diversity of board members. The findings were in many cases contradictive when a single variable was observed against the score an enterprise achieved for governance. When taking a more holistic approach and evaluating multiple variables, it became evident that it is rather a combination of variables which displays some relationship with corporate governance. This study found that board diversity does have a relationship with corporate governance. The magnitude of this relationship could not be ascertained and warrants further research in a wider spectrum of the South African economy and also with a larger group of subjects. / Business Management / M. Tech. (Business Administration)