Female Board Representation and Corporate Acquisition Intensity

Author

Guoli CHEN, INSEAD
Craig CROSSLAND, University of Notre Dame
Sterling HUANG, Singapore Management UniversityFollow

Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

2-2016

Abstract

This study examines the impact of female board representation on firm-level strategic behavior within the domain of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). We build on social identity theory to predict that greater female representation on a firm's board will be negatively associated with both the number of acquisitions the firm engages in and, conditional on doing a deal, acquisition size. Using a comprehensive, multi-year sample of U.S. public firms, we find strong support for our hypotheses. We demonstrate the robustness of our findings through the use of a difference-in-differences analysis on a sub-sample of firms that experienced exogenous changes in board gender composition as a result of director deaths

Keywords

Board characteristics, director gender, mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, strategic leadership

Discipline

Accounting | Corporate Finance | Human Resources Management

Research Areas

Corporate Governance, Auditing and Risk Management

Publication

Strategic Management Journal

Volume

37

Issue

2

First Page

303

Last Page

313

ISSN

0143-2095

Identifier

10.1002/smj.2323

Publisher

Wiley

Citation

CHEN, Guoli; CROSSLAND, Craig; and HUANG, Sterling. Female Board Representation and Corporate Acquisition Intensity. (2016). Strategic Management Journal. 37, (2), 303-313.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soa_research/1273

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.2323