Feminine expertise on board and environmental innovation: the role of critical mass

Abstract

Abstract This paper examines whether women’s attitudes toward environmental innovation are impacted by their individual differences in skills, expertise, experience, and technical knowledge, as well as their visibility and legitimacy on boards. Using the categorization of directors developed by Hillman et al (J Manag Stud 37(2):235–256, 2000) and a dataset including the largest non-financial Spanish-listed entities reported on the IBEX-35 between 2015 and 2019, we can confirm the influence of female business expert and support specialist directors on environmental innovation. We find that although female business expert directors seem to positively influence environmental innovation even below a critical mass, female support specialist directors are only significant and positive drivers of eco-initiation when they gain power and authority on the board. This study confirms the need to examine the connection between women directors and eco-innovation based not only on their expertise and experience but also on their position and legitimacy on the board. In this regard, our results provide evidence that female support specialists need to have a large enough representation on boards to be effective in developing green initiatives. Our results are robust to alternative measures of green innovation (i.e., environmental performance) and overcome endogeneity concerns.

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