Internationalization and board gender diversity in multinational enterprises

Principal Investigator: Frank Jiang, International Business
Project Title: Internationalization and Board Gender Diversity in Multinational Enterprises
Funder: SSHRC Insight Development

While many multinational enterprises (MNEs) have moved from being pressured to actively promoting women onto their corporate boards, there is little research on how a firm’s network of foreign operations may influence women’s representation on its corporate board. This research focuses on the embeddedness of an MNEs’ foreign operations in diverse institutional environments as a potential precursor of board gender diversity. The project aims to link research on board gender diversity with international business literature to investigate whether a firm’s foreign operations in countries characterized by higher levels of gender equality increases women’s representation on its corporate board. Also, how women’s representation on a firm’s board influences the firm’s internationalization process will also be explored. These findings will contribute to the fields of workplace gender equality, international strategy and corporate governance.