De Jonge The Glass Ceiling in Chinese and Indian Boardrooms

Women Directors in Listed Firms in China and India
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-78063-343-5
Verlag: Elsevier Science & Techn.
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 188 Seiten

Reihe: Chandos Asian Studies Series

This book is about women directors in China and India. The aim of the book is to understand more clearly where women are present on corporate boards, and the reasons for their continued absence from most listed company boards. The Glass Ceiling in Chinese and Indian Boardrooms is written at a time of increasing awareness, particularly in Europe, of the benefits of gender equity at the boardroom table, and of the costs of women's continued exclusion from corporate decision-making. Norway's gender equity legislation has now been instrumental in ensuring that women occupy over 40% of all company board seats in that country. France, Italy and Spain are amongst those countries now following the same path towards equity. But Asia in general, and the world's two largest nations in particular, still lag well behind. In China while women enjoy greater social and economic equality than many of their sisters in other parts of Asia, the male-dominated nature of the Party-state apparatus makes it unlikely that legislative change will be achieved any time soon. In India, while the country's 2013 Corporations Law now requires all major listed firms to have at least one woman director, the real challenges for women are social and economic, where much work remains to be done. - Based on detailed surveys of 1,000 key listed firms in India and China - Provides results from empirical questionnaire surveys of key firms - Analyses the importance of board diversity in a rapidly changing world, and its significance for economic and environmental stability

Dr Alice de Jonge is a Senior Lecturer in law at the Department of Business Law and Taxation at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. She lectures in the post-graduate subjects Asian Business Law, International Law and Policy and International Trade Law. In 1998 she was awarded the LAWASIA Research Award. She has worked on various consultancies with international aid organisations and is the author of the book Corporate Governance and China's H-Share Market (2008) as well as numerous other book chapters and journal articles.

Autoren/Hrsg.

De Jonge, Alice

Leseproben

Preface
The aim of this book is to understand the influences behind perceptions of government regulation for gender diversity on listed firms in China and India and to further understand the environment within which those perceptions are formed. This understanding is important for policy formation. If the main obstacles to the introduction of special measures for gender diversity are political, then traditional political campaigns may help to overcome such resistance. In the meantime, social and organisational initiatives, including mentoring schemes, networking programs, childcare provision and flexible work arrangements, can be used to assist talented women with the potential to contribute at the boardroom level. Where the main obstacles to the introduction of special measures are social and economic, then regulatory initiatives, including mandatory targets and quotas, can help to ensure that qualified women are nominated to decision-making roles and can also help to promote social change by breaking down traditional patterns, alliances, beliefs and prejudices. Quotas have been most effective when backed by enforceable sanctions, as is the case in Norway, where women now occupy over 40% of directorships in publicly listed companies. Voluntary targets have also been effective, though less dramatically so, as experience in Spain, France, Belgium and elsewhere demonstrates. Women at senior corporate level in both China and India operate in an environment where corporate boards are dominated by men and where the prevailing culture presents many obstacles to career advancement for women in business. Fewer than 10% of directors on the boards of major firms in China are women, while fewer than 5% of directors leading India’s top firms are women. Experience from many other countries indicates that simply waiting for economic development and social change to bring about the conditions for gender equality does not work. Special measures of the kind envisioned by Article 4 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women are needed. In both China and India, government regulations expressly seek to establish and protect equal rights for women in employment, social security and political participation. Both countries have also established regulations and guidelines aimed at enhancing the quality of corporate governance in publicly listed corporations. The question this book seeks to explore is whether similar corporate governance measures aimed at ensuring gender diversity on company boards are likely to be effective in the different environments of China and India. Legal transplant theory warns that regulatory concepts from one political–legal–social culture cannot simply be transposed to a different context and expected to operate in the same way or with the same degree of effectiveness (Legrand, 1997; Mattei, 1994; Watson, 1993; Berkowitz et al., 2003). Law is a product of the society and political system in which it operates – not the other way round. A socio-legal approach (as opposed to a legal–doctrinal approach) to the study of regulation explicitly recognises this. It recognises that the choices of decision makers, resulting in regulatory change, are themselves shaped by wider social forces (Berkowitz et al., 2003; Halliday & Schmidt, 2004). Likewise, those affected by a particular regulatory change will demonstrate a variety of responses and attitudes towards that change depending upon personal beliefs and experiences that have also been shaped by social forces. Institutional theory considers the processes by which structures, including rules, norms and routines, become established as authoritative guidelines for social behaviour. It inquires into how those elements are created, diffused, adopted and adopted over space and time. Although the focus is typically upon the perpetuation of stability and order, institutional theory also seeks to understand processes of conflict, reform and change in social structures (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Powell & DiMaggio, 1991; Scott, 2004). Both legal transplant theory and institutional theory are relevant to the problem examined in this book, which is whether and which regulatory reforms aimed at promoting greater gender equity on company boards might successfully be adopted in China and/or India. Also relevant are insights provided by those scholars who have tried to capture and compare the essential characteristics of different national cultures (Hofstede, 1984; Hofstede, Hofstede & Minkov, 2010; Schwartz, 1992). The most widely referenced framework for discussing and categorising differences between national cultures in this regard is the one developed by Hofstede in 1980. This book makes use of the most recent version of Hofstede’s framework, which identifies six dimensions of national culture: power distance, individualism/collectivism, masculinity/femininity, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation (Chinese value system) and indulgence versus restraint. Legal transplant theory, institutional theory and culture analysis each provide valuable perspectives on forces of resistance to change within institutions and organisations undergoing transformation (Bovey & Hede, 2001; Greenwood, Suddaby & Hinings, 2002; Hall& Thelen, 2009; Neck, 1996; Schiele, 2011; Yilmaz & Kiliçoglu, 2013). In this book, I utilise the insights provided by these scholars to examine (through the instrument of a survey) attitudes of company leaders towards a variety of different possible regulatory reforms aimed at enhancing gender diversity of company boards in China and India. The conceptual framework utilised to analyse survey responses recognises that attitudes towards gender diversity and towards regulatory/organisational change generally are themselves formed by a combination of individual, organisational, social/cultural and institutional/regulatory forces. This book examines the theory that the most important obstacles to bringing about greater gender equity on company boards in China are political. Politics and policy formation in China are dominated by the Chinese Communist Party (the Party). Top Party posts and Party processes are, in turn, dominated by men (Ding, 2012). Gender equity on company boards simply does not feature on the Party’s current list of policy priorities. Special measures aimed at enhancing gender diversity in business decision making are unlikely in the current environment. If and when the Party and its key policy makers do decide to take the need for gender diversity seriously, then history indicates that change could be achieved with remarkable rapidity. In the meantime, women in China do relatively well in terms of health, education and economic opportunities when compared with other developing countries in Asia. They are well placed to begin campaigning for social and organisational level measures such as gender-blind recruiting practices, women-only networking, recruiting and mentoring events, and flexible working arrangements. In India, in contrast, the key obstacles to bringing about gender diversity in business decision making are social and economic. At the elite level, wealthy Indian women have access to quality health and educational services. Unlike China, India has had both a female president and a female prime minister, as well as several influential female chief ministers. Indian women politicians are able to exercise influence over policy formation. Their influence is evident in the design of India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and in the introduction of draft legislation establishing quotas for women in India’s parliament. More recently, female politicians were instrumental in establishing new rules issued under Section 149 of the Companies Act 2013 requiring all listed companies to have at least one woman on the board of directors. However, when special measures such as these are introduced, the problem is they are often thwarted by social and economic forces keeping Indian women, particularly those from the lower classes, in their place. Examples of such forces are examined in detail in Chapter 4. Study 1 of this book (Chapter 6) uses quantitative data to explore organisational predictors of women on corporate boards in China and India. The most interesting finding to emerge from analysing the data collected for Study 1 is that while state-controlled listed firms in India had a higher proportion of women directors than did their family-controlled counterparts, the opposite was true in China. This finding indicates that government nominees to Indian company boards are more likely to be women than is the case for Chinese state-controlled company boards. This conclusion is further supported by the finding that companies operating in sectors dominated by the state – particularly, the energy, utilities, materials and industrials sector – tend to have fewer women directors than do firms operating in other industry sectors. The significant size and importance of state-controlled companies in the Chinese economy makes the conclusion that state-controlled firms in China are less likely to have women sitting at the boardroom table an important one. It is also a finding that indicates a lack of female influence in government decision making. In Study 2 of this book (Chapter 7), surveys were conducted in both China and India to empirically test attitudes towards a variety of possible approaches to enhancing gender diversity on corporate boards through regulatory and/or voluntary...