FWF - CBRC - Are corporate boards ready for change?

Corporate boards shape the governance and long-term strategy of a company. Their decisions have lasting consequences for employees, shareholder, customers and society as a whole. While the general composition of the board has been the target of numerous studies, the determinants for diversity in this institution and the effects that diversity has are not yet sufficiently understood. Research questions and objectives: In this project we want to investigate what the determinants are that enable diverse boards and we want to understand the dynamics in the process to more diversity. We also want to investigate how diversity influences the firm's governance with respect to corporate social responsibility, its profitability and sustainability, and how feedback mechanisms can be utilized such that diversity is more likely to be created as an endogenous process.