Gender diversity on corporate boards: Review and future research agenda through bibliometric mapping

Abstract

With growing regulatory changes with respect to the composition of the board of directors, the regulation for the appointment of women directors on the corporate boards has seen an upsurge in recent times. It is quite evident to believe that with so many countries mandating the appointment of women, the reasons are not just social but also economic in nature. The extant literature provides enough evidence based on various social and psychological theories that support the diversity element for better decision-making. This study is an attempt to analyze the scientific articles to understand the growth of this concept under various dimensions. The search, undertaken over the Scopus database, led to the retrieval of a total of 547 articles published during the period 1989–2021 which, after final filtration, brought the total number of results to 352 articles. VOSviewer software was employed for the purpose of analyzing these articles which helped in the formulation of bibliometric citation, co-citation, and co-word maps. The findings suggest the prominent countries, significant authors, major studies, and top journals in this domain. In addition, the study also identifies the various dimensions such as financial performance, social performance, environmental performance, sustainability disclosures being impacted due to the presence of gender diversity. The study is significant and unique based on the pretext that it uses the Scopus database for the purpose of bibliometric mapping whereas past studies have used the Web of Science database, thus the study’s outcome made a strong corroboration in identifying emerging paradigms in the gender diversity literature