Q&A with PhD student Amar Benaissa

Amar Benaissa is a third-year PhD candidate who is studying how gender diversity in corporate board composition relates to sustainability reporting and performance.

Why did you decide to do a PhD in Management?

I always wanted to do a PhD, but when I finished my undergraduate degree, Citibank made me an offer that was too good to refuse. As I worked my way up from Junior Trader to Head of the Treasury Department, I remained connected to the academic world by volunteering in schools and universities, talking to students, and presenting at conferences and summits. Then, when I left the private sector to work for an education-related NGO called Junior Achievement, our employment and entrepreneurship training programs further immersed me in academia. After earning an MS in Finance (with distinction) while working full-time, I decided I had done enough work for industry and that it was time to pursue my dream of undertaking a PhD on a full-time basis.

What brought you to Sprott?

I shortlisted Sprott fairly quickly because of its reputation in business education and research, the fit between its faculty members’ expertise and my own research interests, and the School’s supportive environment. I also really liked the fact that Sprott offers a PhD in Management. With Management, you can focus on finance, operations management, or entrepreneurship. The interdisciplinary approach appealed to me.

What is your primary area of research?

Under the supervision of Dr. Sana Mohsni (Associate Professor, Finance), I am studying the relationship between firms’ gender diversity and sustainability. Specifically, we examine whether and how the demographic makeup of a company’s board of directors influences the company’s sustainability strategy. The board of directors is the highest oversight body in a firm or corporation – these are the people who make the big decisions – and while my main focus is on board gender diversity, we also plan to look at other forms of diversity such as nationality and indigeneity alongside such factors as education and expertise. 

When I talk about “sustainability,” I’m referring to both performance and reporting. Whether they know it or not, corporations inevitably have some kind of performance when it comes to sustainability. It could be a positive impact or it could be negative. I’m trying to identify what the actual performance looks like in relation to three main criteria: the environment, society, and governance (ESG).

As for reporting, practices vary widely. Some jurisdictions require companies to report on their sustainability performance, and others don’t. Some companies report more than required; others report only the bare minimum. What’s more, the reporting can range from designated sections of financial reports, to dedicated sustainability or ESG reports, to informal updates or metrics posted to the company’s website or social media accounts.

There’s a lot of buzz around ESG reporting. What will your research contribute to the discussion?

Most studies look at markets—for example, the S&P 500 in the United States or the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) in Canada. We don’t have a lot of studies that look at different sectors. One of my research projects, which I’m undertaking with Dr. Mohsni and Dr. Maryam Firoozi (Associate Professor, Accounting), focuses on the relationship between board gender diversity and sustainability in the mining industry. This work is unique because it focuses on a single sector.

The focus on mining is also important. Mining is a major contributor to GDP in Canada, and the world’s biggest mining companies have headquarters here. Moreover, this sector has been implicated in many scandals over the years. If our findings reveal that board diversity makes things a bit better, investors, shareholders, and corporate leaders could use board demographics to inform their risk assessments.

Does board gender diversity affect all three sustainability factors – environment, society, and governance – the same way?

That’s another gap in the literature we’re working to address. Most studies look at aggregate ESG scores, but my supervisor and I look at the impact of board gender diversity on each discrete aspect (E, S, and G) in a project that earned the 2023 Best Doctoral Student Paper Award from the Global Initiative for Governance and Sustainability (GIGS). Work on this project is ongoing, but preliminary findings reveal variation in the degree of impact. Our next step will be determining why board gender diversity influences some areas more than others.