Women on boards of directors and corporate philanthropic disaster response

Abstract

In this study we conduct firm-level analysis of the impact of women in the boardroom on corporate philanthropic disaster response (CPDR). We propose that CPDR contains agency costs and that female directors are more likely to restrain the associated agency costs of CPDR. We predict a negative relationship between the ratio of women on boards of directors (WoBs) and philanthropic contribution, which is weaker in firms with political connections and stronger in firms with better-developed institutional environments. Data was collected from the philanthropic responses to the Wenchuan earthquake on May 12, 2008 of privately-owned listed Chinese firms. The results support the hypothesized negative relationship, which is found to be weaker in firms with political connections. However, marketization-related factors do not significantly moderate this relationship. These results indicate that CPDR contains agency costs and that female directors do not facilitate the corporate donation process, but rather evaluate the benefits and restrain the associated agency costs.

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