Sky Blog
Companies are more concerned with the #MeToo movement than they used to be. Why this is the case is obvious, but much about the topic is not clear. What does this concern lead companies to do? What should this concern …
There are more women than ever on public company boards, but private companies have not kept pace. Legal scholarship has tended to focus on women on public company boards perhaps in part due to the relative absence of information about …
For founders of companies, appealing to funders can be everything – and that often means projecting a masculine image. In a recent article, we coined the term “venture bearding” to describe this phenomenon, a tactic that can make the difference …
Gender diversity on boards is a leading issue in corporate governance, as has been made clear by anecdotal evidence that associates board gender diversity with better boardroom practices (e.g., Credit Suisse Research Institute, 2016 [1]; Morgan Stanley Research, 2018 [2]) …
In a recent study, we examine whether a director’s “diversity” explains two employment outcomes: being retained on the board and being promoted to board leadership positions. We define diversity as the director’s dissimilarity to the other members of the board …
About 5 percent of U.S.-based publicly-traded firms now have female chief executive officers. While much has been written about the challenges women face in their ascent to top leadership positions, little is known about what happens to them once they …
In the past year, the departures of several female CEOs have made headlines, raising concerns about a potential reversal in the growing trend of women in executive leadership roles. Meg Whitman (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Co.), Indra Nooyi (PepsiCo …
On September 30, 2018, only hours before the deadline, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed bill SB 826, making his state the first in the U.S. to adopt board gender quotas for public companies.
The law requires listed companies headquartered in …
On September 30, 2018, Governor Brown of California signed into law a bill, SB-826, to require female representation on the boards of directors of publicly traded companies who identify as being headquartered in the state. SB-826 makes California the first …
California has made headlines this summer with legislative action toward instituting gender quotas for boards of directors of public companies headquartered in the state. The legislation has passed the state senate; to be enacted, it must be passed by the …
Work/life balance has been described as the issue of our age, but attainment of a balance, or the ‘good life’, is increasingly elusive. This is borne out by a study of Australian male and female corporate lawyers, the findings from …
Are gender-balanced boards more active than non-gender balanced boards? I address this question in “Gender and Board Activeness: The Role of a Critical Mass”, forthcoming in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. Using detailed minutes of …
An estimate by John B. Henry in the Metropolitan Corporate Counsel (February 2008, p. 28) suggests that the annual direct litigation cost of Fortune 500 companies was a whopping $210 billion in 2006, i.e., about one-third of their after-tax profits …
We recently published a paper on lessons that for-profit and nonprofit directors can learn from one another about improving organizational governance. The full paper is available here.
For-profit and nonprofit organizations exist for different reasons: for-profits to generate a …
Our study examines whether gender disparity exists disproportionately along the conservative and liberal geographical division. We investigate whether female board representation depends on the location of company headquarters in “red” states (which tend to vote for Republican candidates) or in …