2016 Best Paper Awards Announcement

• Date: 01 July 2017
• Published date: 01 July 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/corg.12213

ANNOUNCEMENT

2016 Best Paper Awards Announcement

Please join us in congratulating the authors of the award‐winning

papers published in 2016 (volume 24) of Corporate Governance:

An International Review (CGIR). The nomination criteria included

the following three standards: (1) the research question and find-

ings must be highly relevant to practitioners and/or policymakers;

(2) the research study must be both theoretically and

methodologically rigorous; and (3) the research publication must

be published in 2016 in CGIR.

Using these criteria, nominations were made by members of our

distinguished Editorial Advisory Board (EAB) –many of whom have

direct, first‐hand working experience in dealing with the challenges

confronting corporations from their respective regions all over the

world or are leading lights in corporate governance scholarship. Of

the 32 articles published last year amongst the 322 submitted to CGIR,

seven were nominated to be considered for our best paper distinction

by EAB members.

We formed an awards committee comprising four exceptional

scholars serving on our Editorial Review Board. In keeping with our

emphasis on diversity of perspective, they collectively represent

diverse disciplinary backgrounds. Specifically, the four distinguished

members of the awards committee were: Christa Bouwman

(Finance/USA), Jill Brown (Management/USA), Cynthia Clark (Manage-

ment/USA), and Huimin Chung (Finance/Taiwan). Cynthia has a special

role as she is the representative of the Geneen Institute that sponsors

the two awards: $7,500 for the best paper award and $2,500 for the

runner‐up paper award.

The committee was charged with ranking all eligible papers for

their rigor and relevance to international corporate governance issues.

While this was an extremely challenging task, there was a rather strong

consensus on studies that made the most significant contributions to

the international corporate governance literature. Based on the com-

mittee's rankings, we are pleased to announce the 2016 best paper

and runner‐up awards.

The 2016 best paper award goes to Patricia Gabaldon, Celia de

Anca, Ruth Mateos de Cabo and Ricardo Gimeno for their systematic

review of the multidisciplinary theoretical approaches to women on

boards. The paper highlights that, on the supply side, the most

common theories focus on gender role, gender self‐schema, and

work–family conflict, while, on the demand side, focus on gender dis-

crimination, human and social capital, resource dependence, and insti-

tutional environment. The review also suggests policy‐makers tools to

promote women into leadership positions, and proposes new areas of

research to better understand women presence on the board. The

following is a nominating comment by Jill Brown on the strengths of

this research study:

“This paper is very comprehensive, timely, and beautifully

framed with great information for future research. The

supply/demand side framing, truly multi‐cultural, is

terrific. And, a huge sample over many years.

This “Best Paper Award”article may be now accessed free on our

journal's website, and its citation is as follows:

Patricia Gabaldon, Celia de Anca, Ruth Mateos de Cabo and

Ricardo Gimeno, 2016. Searching for Women on Boards: An Analysis

from the Supply and Demand Perspective, Corporate Governance. An

International Review, 24(3): 371–385.

The runner‐up award winner for 2016 was authored by Cathrine

Seierstad. Her study investigates how the introduction of gender

quotas in Norwegian public companies is rationalized and explained

by those women who joined the boards. The study is based on inter-

views with 19 female non‐executive directors. It shows that women

draw on utility (the “business case”) and individual justice arguments

to support quotas and their presence on boards, and that issues of

merit and of gender are intertwined in sometimes contradictory ways.

In term of practical implications, the study underlines the importance

of regulation and of reframing the debate using utility and justice argu-

ments in combination with merit arguments. Christa Bouwman made

this nominating comment on the paper:

“The empirical research design is very careful. This kind of

research (including the useful quotes) benefits others who

want to study women on boards, especially because many

of us do not have access to directors ourselves. This is the

kind of research that I expect to be very useful for CGIR

readers”.

The “Runner‐Up Article Award”citation is as follows:

Cathrine Seierstad, 2016. Beyond the Business Case: The Need

for Both Utility and Justice Rationales for Increasing the Share of

Women on Boards, Corporate Governance. An International Review,

24(4): 390–405.

Thanks go to our nominators and evaluators for this year's award

selection process. Congratulations go to these authors for their signif-

icant contributions to the international corporate governance

literature. We encourage everyone to read these articles and consider

submitting their own work in future editions of CGIR, which is growing

in reach, exposure, and influence every year!

DOI: 10.1111/corg.12213

Corp Govern Int Rev. 2017;25:289. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltdwileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/corg 289