Chapter 1: Do Women on Boards Create Value for The Organization?: A Review of the Literature

The question about how women on boards (WoB) can create value for the organization is, of course, legitimate, and the answer is part of the business case for including WoB. Many studies have considered the contribution to firm performance (Carter, Simkins, & Simpson, 2003; Lückerath-Rovers, 2013), explained by the specificity of the resources that women bring (Soares, Foust-Cummings, Francoeur, & Labelle, 2015) or their ability to manage risk in the organization (Eckel & Grossman, 2008), but the empirical evidence is often mixed. It is important to note that the contribution to value creation goes beyond the sole question of current firm financial performance. Research has also documented various kinds of indirect benefits of WoB for organizational performance, such as higher levels of innovation, corporate social responsibility, and the linkage with stakeholders. This chapter provides a review of how these types of outputs, along with performance, have been covered in previous studies, to better understand the different types of contribution that relate to having WoB.