Totally disagree. Aside from giving encouraging figures you are using terms like "small but insignificant". Anecdotal evidence aside, i find (and many men have noticed the same thing) that once you pass a certain male to female ratio in a company (33% female typically), the company starts to adopt a more female oriented mindset, which kills performance. The same applies to the boards. It is a signal for high performers to leave and pursue more rewarding endeavours. Also last i checked, less risk taking also leads to less innovation and lower performance and adaptability over time, not sure how that is a good argument. And finally, if you have to "force diversity" through quotas then that is a serious problem. It means we are giving power to people who otherwise under fairer circumstances would not have risen, great way to kill meritocracy in the name of social engineering.
I typically read all your articles the day they are published, this one has disappointed me though.
Dear Najib. By now the evidence is quite strong that more women on boards lead to better performance, higher profitability and more investment in R&D, so pretty much the opposite of your anecdotal evidence. Here is a paper that looks at innovation and profitability of companies with more women on their boards: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304405X17303215
let's have a read then despite the fact that I kind of know where these studies are going though: "nothing of statistical significance, yet let's skew results to push our point across".
Is there a study specifically showing which specific industries board membership (beyond the null hypothesis that):
1. Benefits from gender diversity? And why just women? Are there no improvements from LGBTQ?
2. Does not benefit from gender diversity - either gender-neutral or perhaps requiring a different diversification?
3. Benefits from racial diversity/cultural diversity?
4. Benefits from other kinds of diversification?
I have no issue with the results you show if indeed data supports it, but I am concerned that data is viewed only under one prism and it reduces the differentiation to gender, rather than perhaps other factors that sometimes gender does affect but sometimes do not.
Even if the board members are women, would certain women be more contributory than others depending on the industry?
Just as an extreme example, I remember this quote I read in grade school but cannot remember who said it. It goes something like this (paraphrased) "Mothers should be the signatories of the declaration of war".
I think I once saw a study that stated that the impact of diversity is positive across different sectors and industries but I can’t find that study.
As for ethnic diversity and other forms of diversity the problem is that unlike gender data there often just isn’t any data readily available. I have last week written about linguistic diversity and before that about educational diversity and both studies indicate diversity benefits across those dime nations as well. But so far, we just haven’t got the data or the studies that allow us to pass judgement. But I am pretty sure that will change in Colin g years as more companies disclose ethnic data about their boards and employees.
Totally disagree. Aside from giving encouraging figures you are using terms like "small but insignificant". Anecdotal evidence aside, i find (and many men have noticed the same thing) that once you pass a certain male to female ratio in a company (33% female typically), the company starts to adopt a more female oriented mindset, which kills performance. The same applies to the boards. It is a signal for high performers to leave and pursue more rewarding endeavours. Also last i checked, less risk taking also leads to less innovation and lower performance and adaptability over time, not sure how that is a good argument. And finally, if you have to "force diversity" through quotas then that is a serious problem. It means we are giving power to people who otherwise under fairer circumstances would not have risen, great way to kill meritocracy in the name of social engineering.
I typically read all your articles the day they are published, this one has disappointed me though.
Dear Najib. By now the evidence is quite strong that more women on boards lead to better performance, higher profitability and more investment in R&D, so pretty much the opposite of your anecdotal evidence. Here is a paper that looks at innovation and profitability of companies with more women on their boards: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304405X17303215
And here is a study of almost 13,000 companies globally: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2729348
The first paper also shows that this is not just correlation, but causation.
let's have a read then despite the fact that I kind of know where these studies are going though: "nothing of statistical significance, yet let's skew results to push our point across".
Is there a study specifically showing which specific industries board membership (beyond the null hypothesis that):
1. Benefits from gender diversity? And why just women? Are there no improvements from LGBTQ?
2. Does not benefit from gender diversity - either gender-neutral or perhaps requiring a different diversification?
3. Benefits from racial diversity/cultural diversity?
4. Benefits from other kinds of diversification?
I have no issue with the results you show if indeed data supports it, but I am concerned that data is viewed only under one prism and it reduces the differentiation to gender, rather than perhaps other factors that sometimes gender does affect but sometimes do not.
Even if the board members are women, would certain women be more contributory than others depending on the industry?
Just as an extreme example, I remember this quote I read in grade school but cannot remember who said it. It goes something like this (paraphrased) "Mothers should be the signatories of the declaration of war".
I think I once saw a study that stated that the impact of diversity is positive across different sectors and industries but I can’t find that study.
As for ethnic diversity and other forms of diversity the problem is that unlike gender data there often just isn’t any data readily available. I have last week written about linguistic diversity and before that about educational diversity and both studies indicate diversity benefits across those dime nations as well. But so far, we just haven’t got the data or the studies that allow us to pass judgement. But I am pretty sure that will change in Colin g years as more companies disclose ethnic data about their boards and employees.