Women on corporate boards in Asia: the influence of formal and informal institutional features
Creators: name: Shams, Aditi
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 2019

description: Women representation on the corporate boards of Asia is among the lowest relative to the global average but, nonetheless, Asian countries exhibit considerable variation. This thesis investigates the extent to which formal and informal institutional differences affect the extent of female participation on the corporate boards of listed companies in 18 Asian countries. Based on institutional complementary theory, it argues that the variation in female representation on corporate boards in Asia is due to observable variations observed in the countries' national institutional settings. This thesis examines two aspects of institutional variations that are not widely considered in prior cross-country women on corporate board literature: the net marginal effects of institutions, and joint effect of formal and informal institutional mix. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used. First, potentially relevant formal and informal institutions are identified from the broad institutional literature and data are obtained from multiple sources. This is followed by a two-stage empirical analysis. In the first stage, regressions of firm-level board composition are used to identify the significance of differences between countries to test the effects of institutions and culture at the firm-level. In the second stage, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to explore whether specific configurations of institutional and cultural factors can explain qualitative differences or similarities in aggregate board gender composition at the country level. Overall, the analysis provides strong evidence that the participation of women on corporate boards in Asia is significantly associated with the variations in the legal rules, political representation, social structure, religion and culture. The first stage firm-level regression analysis reveals that legal systems, religion and culture are significantly related to female representation on the boards of large corporations. It is evident that women on corporate boards are more prevalent in civil law countries that have greater employment protection and welfare benefits. National culture appears to have more impact on women on corporate board than formal institutions. Female legal rights, political empowerment of women, female in labor force, female literacy rate and religion have significant effects on female representation on corporate boards. Results from the qualitative study suggests that two paths are sufficient for high WOCB participation. In generic institutional setting, not high rule of law, not common law country, not a democratic country, not high power distance and masculinity and high expenditure on education may lead to higher percentages of women in board, for example in Vietnam and Philippines . From a gendered lens, high female legal rights, not high percentages of women in politics, high level of female literacy rate, high power distance and high masculinity may lead to higher percentages of WOCB, for example, in Thailand. Overall, the findings suggest that the women participation in corporate boards of Asia is an outcome of integrated conjecture of these countries formal and informal institutions. Future research may undertake historical path analysis to understand the institutional complementarities in this regional context.