Antecedents of top management team and board gender diversity: A review and an agenda for research

• Published date: 01 January 2023
• Author: Ting Yao
• Date: 01 January 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/corg.12495

REVIEW ARTICLE

Antecedents of top management team and board gender

diversity: A review and an agenda for research

Ting Yao

Department of Organizations & Strategic

Management, Lubar College of Business,

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

Correspondence

Ting Yao, Department of Organizations &

Strategic Management, Lubar College of

Business, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,

3202 N Maryland Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53211,

USA.

Email: yao2@uwm.edu

Abstract

Research Question/Issue: The paper aims to understand the factors hindering and

facilitating women's access to top management teams (TMTs) and boards of direc-

tors. It provides a systematic review of extant scholarly work on the antecedents of

TMT and board gender diversity.

Research Findings/Insights: Reviewing and integrating research from over 200 jour-

nal publications, I develop an integrative review of the antecedents of gender diver-

sity for two types of research contexts—TMT and board—at three levels: person

centered, situation centered, and social-system centered. I also identify knowledge

gaps and suggest areas for future research.

Theoretical/Academic Implications: This comprehensive review of extant research

simultaneously considers antecedents of TMT gender diversity and board gender

diversity, providing insights into divergent trends of TMT and board gender diversity

while highlighting understudied areas. Hopefully, the review will inspire more

research to advance knowledge of the antecedents of TMT and board gender diver-

sity, areas that have received relatively little attention compared with extensive

research on the consequences of gender diversity.

Practitioner/Policy Implications: Gender diversity in corporate leadership is a topic

of great interest. The growth in board gender diversity is unprecedented, but growth

in TMT gender diversity has been stagnant. I offer a synthesis of extant literature to

understand the social, situational, and individual drivers of TMT and board gender

diversity, providing valuable insights for policymakers, investors, executives, and

directors who seek to improve corporate leadership gender diversity.

KEYWORDS

corporate governance, antecedents, boards of directors, gender diversity, top management

teams

1|INTRODUCTION

Gender diversity of corporate leadership is a topic of great interest.

Regulators, politicians, and investors are stepping up pressure on com-

panies to increase gender diversity. Both top management teams

(TMTs) and boards of directors sit at the top of the corporate ladder,

where women are underrepresented. There is a strong trend toward

equitable female representation on boards: Almost all the companies

on major indices across 20 of the world's major economies

1

show a

significant increase in board gender diversity between 2014 and

2022 (Altrata, 2022). Noticeably, by the first quarter of 2022,

France (CAC40) had the highest proportion of female directors

(44%), followed by Italy (FTSE/MIB) and the United Kingdom

(FTSE100) with about 40% each (Altrata, 2022). In the United States,

Received: 24 February 2021 Revised: 30 August 2022 Accepted: 13 September 2022

DOI: 10.1111/corg.12495

Corp Govern Int Rev. 2023;31:227–248. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/corg © 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 227

96% of S&P 500 boards had two or more women (Spencer

Stuart, 2021), and 31% of board members were female

(Altrata, 2022). This growth will likely continue as more countries

implement gender-related legislation (e.g., the European Union

[EU] passed a law in 2022 requiring that publicly listed companies

with 250 or more employees in all 27 member nations have at least

40% of directors be women).

However, increasing female board representation does not lead

to more women on TMTs. All of these countries have far to go to

bridge the TMT gender gap. By the first quarter of 2022, most coun-

tries in the global 20 major indices had less than 25% female repre-

sentation on TMTs (Australia [ASX100] had the highest share: 29.7%

are women) (Altrata, 2022). Only about 5% of CEOs are women

(Altrata, 2022). Some countries have started to implement gender

quotas requiring minimum female representation on TMTs

(e.g., Germany and France, as well as the EU), but the impact of these

attempts is unclear since the new legislation will only take effect in

the next few years.

Legislative differences are not the only reasons for the slow

growth of female representation on TMTs. Women face unique bar-

riers to assuming executive positions. Executives and board members

have distinct roles and maintain divided goals and agendas (see

Carpenter et al., 2004; Fama, 1980). Directors' primary responsibilities

are monitoring and advising, and they interact with their companies

on a monthly or quarterly basis (Eisenhardt, 1989; Pfeffer &

Salancik, 1978). Executives' primary responsibilities are strategic deci-

sion making and leadership, and they participate in daily company

activities (e.g., see Menz, 2012). The different job natures and require-

ments demand different selection criteria and processes for directors

and executives, suggesting there may be unique antecedents for TMT

and board gender diversity. Because TMT gender diversity continues

to lag board gender diversity, there is an outstanding and worrying

question about how high-potential women will gain more access to

executive positions in the future. One starting point for addressing

this question is to survey extant research about how women have

previously achieved these top positions and to identify knowledge

gaps for future research. My review focuses on these antecedents of

TMT and board gender diversity. Such a review will potentially guide

the future efforts of policymakers, investors, executives, and directors

to advance gender diversity on TMTs and boards.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first comprehensive

review of extant research simultaneously considering the antecedents

of TMT gender diversity and board gender diversity. Previous similar

reviews focus only on board (Gabaldon et al., 2016; Kirsch, 2018;

Reddy & Jadhav, 2019; Terjesen et al., 2009) or TMT (Nielsen, 2010)

diversity or undertake general discussion of advancing in managerial

hierarchies without specifying the levels (Gipson et al., 2017;

Powell & Butterfield, 2015; Vanderbroeck, 2010). My review maps

out the antecedents associated with both executive positions and

director positions. I also review the literature on female executives'

and directors' tenures and exits, which are additional crucial determi-

nants of female representation. Such a parallel design provides

insights into why there are different diversity trends on TMTs and

boards.

I use a multi-level framework (Powell, 1999; Riger &

Galligan, 1980) to organize articles and identify three types of ante-

cedents: social-system centered, situation centered, and person cen-

tered. This framework is an effective tool for organizing a large

number of studies at different levels. Earlier review studies have

adopted the same framework (Powell & Butterfield, 2015) or a similar

framework (macro-, meso-, and micro-levels) (Kirsch, 2018; Terjesen

et al., 2009). Specifically, social-system-centered explanations refer to

the political, governmental, social, and economic factors that influence

men's and women's chances of hiring and promotion. Situation-

centered explanations focus on group and organizational-level factors.

Person-centered explanations involve individual-level factors that

contribute to differences between women and men in performing

tasks and making career decisions.

Following this multi-level structure, I systematically review and

compare the antecedents of TMT and board gender diversity. The

review emphasizes the need for collaboration between relevant

parties (e.g., policymakers, investors, firm managers, and potential

female candidates) to sustainably improve TMT and board gender

diversity. The following sections present the scope of the review, the

findings, and a future research agenda on the topics of TMT and

board gender diversity.

2|SCOPE OF THE REVIEW

I used several techniques to identify relevant journal publications.

First, I searched three databases: Business Source Premier, Web of

Science, and JSTOR. Search terms were generated by combining

words indicating the level of analysis (such as board* of directors,direc-

tor,top management team, and executive), words that indicated gender

diversity (such as female representation,gender diversity,women,

female, and gender), and the word antecedent. I used the same terms in

Google Scholar and SSRN to further identify possible unpublished

working papers. The board-level search returned 1305 articles, and

the TMT-level search returned 1303 articles. I read the title and

abstract to identify relevant articles on board and TMT gender diver-

sity antecedents. Second, I conducted a targeted search in the leading

and specialty journals,

2

including the Academy of Management Journal,

Administrative Science Quarterly,Corporate Governance: An Interna-

tional Review,Journal of Business Ethics,Journal of Management,Lead-

ership Quarterly,Management Science,Organization Science, and

Strategic Management Journal, to ensure that key publications were

not omitted. I also located articles by cross-referencing.

The final sample comprises 213 antecedent articles,

3

including

170 empirical studies and 43 conceptual papers and reviews. Appen-

dix S1 presents the complete list of included articles. I considered all

213 articles in developing the review and discussion of future

research, but I only included the 170 empirical articles in the discus-

sion of research trends.

228 YAO