Diversity on the board

• Boardroom diversity has been subject to significant changes thanks to new legislation in Europe and in other parts of the world. There is a greater focus on gender diversity in the board which is in line with active policy debates for promoting gender equality in reforming organizational structures. Given these changes it is not surprising to see a great interest in studying the impact of gender diversity in recent corporate governance research. Although current research places greater emphasis on studying gender diversity, research on board diversity can be categorized in two groups: "taskrelated and non-task-related" diversity (Adams et al., 2015). Task-related diversity is mainly related to the functional background, education, experience, and knowledge of directors, while non-task-related diversity refers mostly to the personal characteristics such as gender, age, race, or nationality. In this chapter, we begin with a brief theoretical overview on the topic of diversity on the board and proceed with a discussion of diversity in Swedish corporate boards. While we seek to present research on diversity in various dimensions, we give a bigger room to gender diversity in Sweden in line with the current debate in policy making and research. Sweden offers an interesting setting to study gender diversity because despite the lack of legislations for having female directors on the board, there have been various pressures on corporations for improving gender diversity in management and corporate boards. The institutional setting of Sweden and the Swedish law plays an important role in promoting women in the labor market and not least in reaching top level management positions. Specifically, the law on gender balance (jämn könfördelning) since 1994 promotes equal gender distribution and requires that the proportion of men and women in workforce range between 40 to 60 percent. Having such support for bringing women to work in place has made Sweden to be one of the top countries (out of 146 surveyed countries) in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI) in their study of national gender gaps on economic, political, education and health related criteria.32 Diversity is also promoted in the Swedish Corporate Governance Code, considering different aspects of diversity in terms of competence and experience, but also explicitly to strive for gender balance: The board is to have a composition appropriate to the company's operations, phase of development and other relevant circumstances. The board members elected by the shareholders' meeting are collectively to exhibit diversity and breadth of qualifications, experience and background. The company is to strive for gender balance on the board. (Corporate Governance Code, 2020; rule 4.1)

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Genusstudier (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Gender Studies (hsv//eng)

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