Structural Equality at the Top of the Corporation: Mandated Quotas for Women Directors

Bruce Kogut, Jordi Colomer, Mariano Belinky

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

    Abstract

    We propose a concept of structural equality as a compromise between competing policy preferences of equality and individual liberty to address a stunning property of the governance of corporations, namely, the paucity of female directors on corporate boards. An argument for imposing a quota for women directors on boards is the need to disrupt structural impediments to permit endogenous mechanisms to sustain female recruitment beyond a critical mass. Using estimates from the Norwegian experiment, we apply an agent-based model to American board data to show that modest numerical quotas generate well-connected networks of women directors who attain equality in their centrality and influence. The analysis demonstrates the utility of computational social science for identifying policies that generate alternative and possible worlds of greater structural equality
    Original languageEnglish
    JournalStrategic Management Journal
    Volume35
    Issue number6
    Pages (from-to)891-902
    Number of pages12
    ISSN0143-2095
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2014

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