From Presence to Influence: Gender,Nationality and Network Centrality of Corporate Directors

Abstract

The enduring lack of diversity in the corporate elite continues to attract attention from scholars and practitioners. However, the issue of representation or ‘body count’ – in particular for women – tends to dominate the discussion and overshadows social-relational dimensions. Adopting a network perspective, this article investigates how gender and nationality interact with human and social capital (i.e. director capital), explaining why particular directors hold more influential positions in the corporate elite. Findings from Swiss data show that some specific aspects of human and social capital matter more than others for being an influential director and that, ceteris paribus, Swiss citizens benefit most from both sources of capital. The discussion engages with the implications of our findings on current approaches intended to increase the numbers of appointments of ‘diverse’ directors, and how these are expected to change the corporate elite and the related job market in the longer term.

Keywords

corporate elite director capital foreign directors gender human capital influence nationality networks social capital women directors

Introduction

While demographic diversity in the workplace at large is increasing, diversity in the corporate elite in general and the director population in particular is still quite limited. Many governments – and in some cases large institutional shareholders – have tried to ‘correct’ for the lack of diversity in boardrooms, chiefly by instituting quotas or targets for women on public and corporate boards (Maume et al., 2019; Seierstad et al., 2017a, 2017b). However, the discussion about board diversity is dominated by the issue of board representation in terms of ‘body count’ and it is assumed that, when the numbers are right, the increased presence of non-traditional directors will lead to their equivalence in the director population, including network positions yielding critical benefits such as influence (Kogut et al., 2014). It is assumed that time-limited labour market interventions such as policies or quotas lead to long-term changes in the career paths of corporate directors. In this article, this assumption is recast by investigating how demographics interact with human and social capital variables (i.e. director capital) in explaining why some directors hold more influential positions in the corporate elite, so as to understand the challenges of changing the director job market beyond the body count.

A number of articles investigate the qualifications of ‘non-typical’ or ‘diverse’ directors, paying close attention to the importance of human capital – particularly education – for professional trajectories (Singh et al., 2008). However, findings about the decisiveness of human capital alone are not conclusive (Johnson et al., 2013). Also, recent work in this journal about the effects of gender-based quotas in Norway shows that what is considered to be relevant human capital for directorships is context-dependent (Seierstad et al., 2020). Furthermore, focusing on individual qualifications still constrains our engagement with the social-relational dimensions in a director’s profile. Thus, a supplemental challenge to forming more-diverse boards is to not only appoint a qualified director but one whose voice matters and whose opinions will weigh on decision-making; in other words, a director with influence (Westphal and Milton, 2000). Overall, more work is needed to understand recent changes in the composition and workings of the corporate elite from a network perspective, both in terms of internationalisation and gender diversity (Heemskerk and Fennema, 2014; Heemskerk et al., 2016). This article posits that board diversity goes beyond the body count and that director influence is a crucial aspect to consider for leveraging the promises of board diversity and of the wider social objectives of diversifying the corporate elite and the afferent job market. Thus, in order to consider the effects of director influence, it is essential to extend our attention to the notion of social capital.

In contrast to human capital, the concept of social capital allows us to get a relational rather than an individual-centred perspective on how resourceful individuals are (Bourdieu, 1986). The value of directors’ social capital and, correspondingly, their ability to derive advantages such as influence, is not only a function of the number of connections, but also depends on to whom they are linked (Bourdieu, 1986). The director population in a given country constitutes a social group – the corporate elite – that builds ties and exchanges resources throughout their professional career (Burt, 1978; Connelly and Van Slyke, 2012). This group encompasses directors and top managers of leading firms (Fitzsimmons and Callan, 2016; McDonald and Westphal, 2013; Useem, 1982). The literature on corporate board interconnections shows that they are connected through social relations and tend to form ‘small worlds’ (Kogut, 2012). However, this is not sufficient to indicate that they are more influential directors than others over time, as the counting of direct ties is reckoned to be a limited way to assess network outcomes such as influence (Borgatti, 2005; Boyd et al., 2017).

To investigate the contingencies that affect director influence, this article examines, for Switzerland, how aspects of social and human capital differently affect director influence of female versus male, and local versus foreign directors. The absence of quotas or legally enforced targets allows us to limit issues of endogeneity and capture the effect that gender diversity has on director influence, which can then be discussed with regard to how labour market interventions are expected to induce long-term change in the director population. The findings support the argument that influence is a function of higher endowments in director capital, but also that how much one benefits from higher endowments depends on demographic characteristics – in this case, being a local (male) director.

This article contributes to the literature on corporate elite diversity in several ways. First, it contributes to the scholarly conversation on diversity beyond the body count in the corporate elite (Bolíbar et al., 2019; Bolton and Muzio, 2008; Elstad and Ladegard, 2010) by taking a network perspective. Rather than using simulations (Kogut et al., 2014), the article, starting from an intervention-free empirical example, questions whether a change in body count is sufficient to induce longer-term changes in the corporate elite and in the related niche, yet power-laden, labour market for directors. Second, the article contributes to this literature by exploring two dimensions of board diversity in the same study; namely, gender and national origin, the latter being seldom studied (Oxelheim et al., 2013; Ruigrok et al., 2007; van Veen and Marsman, 2008).

Diversity and influence in the director population

Mizruchi and Bunting (1981) define influence as ‘leadership ability in situations of collective activity and as the ability to affect the outcomes of events’ (p. 476). Useem (1979) builds upon the definition of influence, establishing the existence of an inner group in the corporate elite, and showing that being centrally positioned relates to influence (Adams et al., 2010; Lester et al., 2008). This aligns with research in sociology, management and graph theory, where network centrality and influence are shown to be linked (Bonacich, 1987; El-Khatib et al., 2015; Ibarra and Andrews, 1993; Padgett and Ansell, 1993). Influence and centrality are thus used interchangeably in the remainder of this article.

Gender, nationality and influence

In recent years, research has discussed diversity beyond the body count and has investigated the importance of director influence on shaping new strategic decisions and firm performance. Research shows that women and persons with a non-Caucasian ethnic background tend to sit on boards or top management teams as tokens of the firm’s goodwill to conform to stakeholders’ expectations about diversity or to legislation (Cook and Glass, 2014; Smith and Parrotta, 2018). This leads to issues of meaningful inclusion and participation, and on related opportunity to influence decision-making (Van Der Walt and Ingley, 2003).

Boards of directors have long been predominantly all male, and the persistence of the ‘old (white) boys networks’ can be captured in director network structures, which change very little over time (Gamba and Kleiner, 2001), reflecting the social phenomena homophily (McPherson and Smith-Lovin, 1987). With respect to nationality, in line with the tendencies of homophily, the majority of directors on boards of directors are locals (Oxelheim et al., 2013). Previous research also shows that majority-group members who are more central in a network are typically male (Ibarra, 1992; Mollica et al., 2003). Moreover, demographically diverse directors are less likely to hold key network positions (Van Der Walt and Ingley, 2003; Westphal and Milton, 2000), relating centrality in networks to influence (Ibarra, 1992; Stevenson and Radin, 2009).

Hypothesis H1a: Gender positively affects network centrality so that male directors are more centrally positioned in the national network of corporate directors.

Hypothesis H1b: Nationality positively affects network centrality so that local directors are more centrally positioned in the national network of directors.

Human capital, diversity and influence

A high level of human capital, that is to say the sum of skills and experience individuals accumulate throughout their careers through education and tenure, is crucial for director selection and peer recognition, as well as for the successful fulfilment of that role (Hillman and Dalziel, 2003; Johnson et al., 2013). Directors’ prior professional experience as managers and board members is a strong determinant of their level of human capital, and consequently of the level of knowledge and skills on how boards, firms and industries operate (Becker, 2009). Also, directors’ level of education is positively correlated with firm-level innovation and innovative performance (Dalziel et al., 2011; Wincent et al., 2010): an increasing number of directors now hold university degrees, including a growing number of MBAs.

A limited body of work looks at the interactions between human capital and diversity. It is argued that ‘non-traditional’ directors need to have more capital than others to reach desirable positions, such as having a spotless curriculum vitae (see, for example, Singh et al., 2008). This relates to a broader body of research about the different hurdles such as bias and stereotypes that, for example, women and non-white persons have to overcome in order to be considered as qualified candidates, and then later as equal participants in decision-making (Bilimoria and Piderit, 1994; Terjesen et al., 2009). Moreover, research about managers suggests that, in terms of network advantage, men will benefit more than women from having higher human capital (Ibarra, 1997). Furthermore, tokenism theory suggests that the outsider director demographic status would matter more for director influence than the human capital they bring with them (Bilimoria and Piderit, 1994; Terjesen et al., 2009; Torchia et al., 2011). While there is limited literature about foreigners on boards, it is here argued that their outsider status warrants similar reasoning.

Hypothesis H2a: Human capital positively moderates the effect of director gender (male) on network centrality.

Hypothesis H2b: Human capital positively moderates the effect of director nationality (local) on network centrality.

Social capital, diversity and influence

A growing body of work suggests that the capacity for access to valuable resources through one’s network matters for directorships (Podolny and Baron, 1997; Withers et al., 2012), and management research shows that social capital can play a critical role in obtaining them (Hodigere and Bilimoria, 2015; Johnson et al., 2013; Withers et al., 2012). Social capital is seen as an asset that one brings to a firm. For example, directors with ties to private equity deal partners increase the likelihood of such deals going through (Stuart and Yim, 2010). Furthermore, direct network ties improve the level of advice and counsel provided on strategic issues in the board (Westphal, 1999). Also, while the type of education matters for human capital, studying in a given higher education institution also fosters the development of directors’ networks in the form of direct ties to former classmates (Adler and Kwon, 2002) or indirect ties resulting from their status as alumni (Certo, 2003), which can be activated to access resources or get information. Finally, government ties have value in terms of access to resources (Adams et al., 2010; Lester et al., 2008).

Moreover, even relative outsiders can be valued for their social capital (Kim and Cannella, 2008). For example, Masulis et al. (2012) find that foreign independent directors help improve the success rate of cross-border acquisitions in their home countries but, when such investments decrease, their presence is associated with poorer performing firms. Foreigners can thus bring in appreciated resources, yet are less likely to become central or influential among their peers. Further, the literature strongly suggests that the ability to acquire and leverage social capital is an unequal endeavour depending on the person’s demographic characteristics, in particular gender but also race/ethnicity (Burt, 1998; Villesèche and Josserand, 2017; Westphal and Milton, 2000). This means that non-typical directors will experience constraints not only in the accumulation of social capital, but also in deriving benefits from their social capital so as to bestow influence.

Hypothesis H3a: Social capital positively moderates the effect of director gender (male) on network centrality.

Hypothesis H3b: Social capital positively moderates the effect of director nationality (local) on network centrality.

Methods

Data

The formed hypotheses are tested with data about the director population in Switzerland. In Switzerland, gender diversity has not been a key concern, and quotas and related policies have repeatedly been blocked both in the political and corporate realms (Villesèche and Sinani, 2017). However, in contrast to other Western countries, top Swiss firms have a majority of foreign directors on their boards (van Veen et al., 2014). Switzerland is a small country but also a world-class player in today’s economy, appearing in the top 10 in Fortune Global 500, and attracting international top talents with competitive wages in reputed firms. The case of Switzerland may thus not be representative of the international ‘realities’ of the corporate elite (Ruigrok et al., 2007). However, with a view to generating theoretical insights, this setting lets us examine director influence with minimal interference from policies that encourage or even constrain diversity on boards of directors, while constraints and advantages deriving from the social structure are still present. In other words, this quasi-absence of institutional pressure lets us avoid endogeneity issues. Notably, it allows us to empirically investigate the importance of ‘being a local’ – here, a Swiss national – in a context where locals do not constitute a numerical majority.

The data were obtained from BoardEx, a database containing the profiles of over 450,000 board members, top executives and senior managers. It consolidates public domain information regarding current and past positions, board appointments, age, experience in the sector, education, and demographic details such as age, nationality and gender. In BoardEx, any two individuals are linked if they have been sitting together on a board or in a top management team. While this definition has not allowed us to establish the closeness or importance of the professional relationship of two directors, it was nevertheless possible to map out a web of relations that can be minimally categorised as weak links. Notably, these can yield access to novel information in the form of advice and business or career opportunities (Granovetter, 1983). It is acknowledged that the set-up gives us limited ability to comment on causality, as is commonly the case in research involving social capital dimensions (Godechot, 2016).

The database consists of the cumulative director information in years 2000–2009 for the directors of the 50 largest Swiss companies featured in the SMI Expanded index¹ in 2009. Owing to missing information, the sample was reduced to 45 firms. The base network consists of the ties between the 375 directors of these firms during years 2000–2009. This network matrix consists of node attributes of director characteristics such as gender, age, human and social capital variables, as well as other variables collected from BoardEx. In other words, information on the directors and their networks was used to investigate how director capital affects director influence in the 45 largest Swiss firms.

Descriptive results (see the online Appendix, Table 1) show that 90% of the directors in the database are male – which is not surprising given that there are no quotas or official targets for gender balance in Switzerland – and that 52% of directors are foreigners, which is remarkable by international comparison. Of these directors, 74% are highly educated with at least a Master’s degree. On average, each director in the sample sits on four quoted boards and six private boards.

Mean difference tests (see the online Appendix, Tables 2 and 3) show that the few female directors are on average younger and have significantly more ties to foreign firms than male directors, who spend a significantly longer time on boards and have more university ties than female directors. There are no significant differences between female and male directors in terms of director network size, level of education and the number of ties to Swiss firms and government, nor are there differences between the sizes of boards on which they sit. Foreign directors have on average significantly larger network sizes than Swiss directors and more ties to foreign firms as well as more government ties. In contrast, Swiss directors have significantly more ties to Swiss firms and spent longer time on boards than foreign directors. There are no significant differences between foreign and Swiss directors in age, education and ties to universities, nor are there differences in the size of boards they sit on. Finally, regarding multicollinearity (see the online Appendix, Table 4), the number of quoted boards and the number of private boards correlated at 0.6. Thus, to avoid multicollinearity issues each variable is used in distinct regression models when applicable.

Dependent variable

Director influence was captured via a measure of relative centrality known as Bonacich eigenvector centrality (Bonacich, 1987): directors are as central to their networks as are their contacts. Eigenvector centrality is considered to be an ideal choice to capture network influence; it is comparable to other measures of influence proposed in the literature (for an extended discussion, see, for example, Borgatti, 2005). Eigenvector centrality is measured as the number of contacts to which a director in our sample is connected, relative to the distances among these contacts. Information and resources in a network are not constrained to flow only in one direction or through direct ties; eigenvector centrality can thus represent the ease with which a director both diffuses and accesses resources compared to more peripheral board members. In analytical language, given an adjacency matrix A (such as the matrix of our director network), the eigenvector centrality of vertex i (denoted c_i) in this matrix, is given by c_i = SA_ij(a+bc_j), where a and b are parameters (Bonacich, 1987).²

In addition, we consider three alternative network centrality measures: k-core, closeness and betweenness (see the online Appendix, Tables 5, 6 and 7). Overall, these measures show that although there are significantly fewer women than men in the Swiss boards of directors, a few of them can be as central as men. These same measures suggest that foreigners are well represented in the top closeness centrality scores but do not stand out either with regards to k-core or betweenness centrality scores. Thus, there is no clear pattern emerging from these alternative centrality measures. Besides, these measures are ‘simplistic’ in that each node’s centrality is determined independently from that of other nodes. In contrast, with eigenvector centrality, each node’s centrality is determined relative to the centrality of other nodes. These results support the theory-based choice to work with eigenvector centrality to capture influence.

Independent variables

Demographic variables

Gender is a dummy using 1 for male and 0 for female directors. Nationality is a dummy using 1 for Swiss directors and 0 for foreign directors. These dummies capture the difference in the network influence of a male versus a female director and a Swiss versus a foreign director, respectively.

Human capital

Education is a dummy variable using 1 if the director has at least a Master’s degree (i.e. four to five years of higher education) and 0 otherwise. Experience adding to a director’s credentials is captured with time on boards as the total number of years the director has been serving on boards; the number of quoted boards and the number of private boards in which a director has served.

Social capital

Ties to Swiss firms is a count of the number of contacts a given director has in nationally incorporated firms, both quoted and private. A high number of ties to members of the corporate elite in firms of a given country denotes a high degree of local embeddedness, and thus can explain a more favourable network position (Lee, 2009).

Ties to foreign firms is a count of the number of contacts a given director has in firms incorporated outside of Switzerland, both quoted and private. A central, influential director is expected to have a significant international network. Indeed, the local and foreign networks are not mutually exclusive, but represent access to different types of resources (Davoine and Ravasi, 2013). This is in line with theoretical arguments about the need to have a diversified portfolio of ties across different social circles ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ (Maurer and Ebers, 2006) in order to avoid too high closure (Burt, 2001) and lock-in situations (Gargiulo and Benassi, 2000).

Ties to government and ties to universities are also important for directors’ prominence (see, for example, Lester et al., 2008), and thus their position in the network.

Control variables

Age and board size matter for director network opportunities; older directors tend to have more experience and accumulate network ties over time, and directors that sit in large boards have the opportunity to create more connections and thus may have a larger network. Also, directors in top firms are likely to become directors in other leading organisations as this is the customary talent pool (Johnson et al., 2013). Industry is operationalised as a set of dummy variables based on the two-digit NACE code for whether firms belong to Mining & Construction, Manufacturing, Finance/Insurance/Real Estate, Services, Public Administration or Transportation/Communication. Services are our base industry in regression analysis given that this is the most represented industry in the sample.

Estimation

Since our dependent variable (centrality) is a network variable, we estimate node-level regressions using the social network analysis software UCINET (Borgatti et al., 2018). UCINET node regressions are different from ordinary least squares regressions in that the actors in the network are not independent of each other; thus, the error terms and p-values are estimated using the random permutations method (Hanneman and Riddle, 2005). The method of social network analysis (SNA) is grounded in the formal sociology of Simmel and graph theory and supports the development of theory about relations and structural positions in networks. SNA has been previously used to generate insights about gender diversity in the corporate elite (Hawarden and Marsland, 2011; Hodigere and Bilimoria, 2015; Villesèche et al., 2021).

Results

Table 1 reports results on hypotheses H1a and H1b about a main effect of gender and nationality on centrality. The results from Model 1 indicated that there is very weak evidence that male directors are more central in the network compared to female directors (b=0.081, p<0.10). In contrast, the results in Model 2 showed that Swiss directors have a significantly higher eigenvector centrality than foreign directors (b=0.37, p<0.001). In Model 3, both gender and nationality were accounted for and the results further support that Swiss directors are more central (b=0.36, p<0.001). Given the composition of our sample, these results suggested that influence is not an ‘automatic’ outcome of a numerical majority/minority situation.

Table 1.

Regression results for gender and nationality.

Model	Demographics
	1	2	3
Gender – male (H1a)	0.081^† (0.066)		0.07(0.106)
Nationality – Swiss (H1b)		0.37*** (0.000)	0.36*** (0.000)
Control variables
Age	−0.06(0.856)	−0.03(0.692)	−0.04(0.779)
Board size	0.44*** (0.000)	0.50*** (0.000)	0.50*** (0.000)
Mining & construction	0.06(0.149)	0.09^† (0.066)	0.087^† (0.074)
Manufacturing	0.002(0.486)	0.03(0.355)	0.03(0.339)
Transport & communication	0.02(0.347)	0.07(0.157)	0.07(0.141)
Finance/insurance/real estate	−0.2(1.000)	−0.23(1.000)	−0.24(1.000)
Public administration	−0.03(0.686)	0.014(0.378)	0.015(0.366)
Intercept	0.008(1.000)	−0.009(1.000)	−0.013(1.000)
Random seeds	595	658	355

Notes: Standardised coefficients are reported, p-values in parentheses. Significance indications: ***p < .001; **p < .01; *p < .05; ^†p < .10.

Table 2 reports results for hypotheses H2a and H2b.³ Owing to possible multicollinearity, the two hypotheses were tested separately for the number of quoted versus private board seats that a director holds. In Models 1 and 3, the coefficients of the interaction of human capital variables (i.e. education, time on boards, number of private boards and number of quoted boards) with the gender dummy were insignificant.⁴ Thus, there was no significant difference on the impact of human capital variables on network centrality for men compared to women and no support for hypothesis H2a. In Models 2 and 4, the interaction effects indicated that Swiss directors are more centrally positioned than foreign directors whether they are sitting on quoted boards (Model 4, b=0.35, p<0.01) or on private boards (Model 2, b=0.25, p<0.05). Besides, there is limited evidence to indicate that Swiss directors with longer board experience are more centrally positioned than foreign directors (Model 4, b=0.16, p<0.10). Overall, these results suggested that, although foreign directors on average sit on more boards than Swiss directors (both quoted and private), they are less central in the director network. This indicates that influence is the outcome of more than just board presence and body count.

Table 2.

Regression results for human capital.

	Human capital – private firms		Human capital – quoted firms
	1	2	3	4
Gender – male	0.11(0.150)		0.12(0.130)
Nationality – Swiss		0.09*** (0.000)		0.03*** (0.000)
Time on board	0.19(0.134)	−0.08(0.779)	0.19(0.131)	−0.09(0.811)
No. of quoted boards			0.08(0.300)	0.04(0.263)
No. of private boards	−0.03(0.566)	−0.02(0.586)
Education MSc +	0.17^† (0.091)	0.11^† (0.059)	0.16(0.107)	0.10^† (0.080)
Gender – male × time on board (H2a)	−0.11(0.754)		−0.1(0.757)
Gender – male × no. private boards (H2a)	0.01(0.477)
Gender – male × education MSc + (H2a)	−0.03(0.601)		−0.02(0.563)
Gender – male × no. quoted boards (H2a)			−0.06(0.641)
Nationality – Swiss × time on board (H2a)		0.12(0.159)		0.16^† (0.095)
Nationality – Swiss × no. private boards (H2a)		0.25* (0.011)
Nationality – Swiss × education MSc + (H2a)		0.06(0.333)		0.005(0.485)
Nationality – Swiss × no. quoted boards (H2a)				0.35** (0.002)
Control variables
Age	−0.08(0.861)	−0.02(0.661)	−0.08(0.875)	−0.05(0.771)
Board size	0.45*** (0.000)	0.49*** (0.000)	0.43*** (0.000)	0.46*** (0.000)
Mining & construction	0.05(0.203)	0.03(0.279)	0.05(0.208)	0.01(0.400)
Manufacturing	−0.003(0.515)	0.01(0.425)	−0.03(0.506)	−0.03(0.668)
Transport & communication	0.01(0.407)	0.04(0.289)	0.02(0.389)	0.034(0.301)
Finance/insurance/real estate	−0.2(0.987)	−0.21(0.997)	−0.2(0.999)	−0.22(1.000)
Public administration	−0.02(0.592)	0.02(0.348)	−0.016(0.589)	0.03(0.442)
Intercept	−0.01(1.000)	−0.011(0.999)	−0.001(0.999)	−0.003(1.000)
R²	0.22	0.37	0.4	0.35
Random seeds	799	1000	894	462

Notes: Standardised coefficients are reported, p-values in parentheses. Significance indications: ***p < .001; **p < .01; *p < .05; ^†p < .10.

Table 3 reports results for hypotheses H3a and H3b.⁵ Model 1 shows that male directors with more ties to Swiss firms are more central than female directors in the director network (Model 1, b=0.47, p<0.05). With respect to nationality, Model 2 shows that Swiss directors with more ties to Swiss firms are more central than foreign directors (Model 2, b=0.24, p<0.01). Furthermore, Swiss directors with more government ties are more central than foreign directors with government ties (Model 2, b=0.18, p<0.01). This provides support for hypotheses H3a and H3b.

Table 3.

Regression results for social capital.

	Social capital
	1	2
Gender – male	0.03(0.321)
Nationality – Swiss		0.23*** (0.003)

No. of linked Swiss firms	−0.17(0.802)	0.13^† (0.072)
No. of linked foreign firms	0.1(0.273)	0.23** (0.009)
Government ties	0.04(0.345)	−0.05(0.775)
University ties	0.04(0.385)	−0.02(0.569)
Gender – male × ties Swiss firms (H3a)	0.47* (0.019)
Gender – male × ties foreign firms (H3a)	0.03(0.429)
Gender – male × government ties (H3a)	−0.05(0.640)
Gender – male × university ties (H3a)	−0.002(0.508)
Nationality – Swiss × ties Swiss firms (H3b)		0.24** (0.010)
Nationality – Swiss × ties foreign firms (H3b)		0.08(0.133)
Nationality – Swiss × government ties (H3b)		0.18** (0.006)
Nationality – Swiss × university ties (H3b)		0.03(0.333)
Age	−0.06(0.825)	−0.06(0.835)
Board size	0.39*** (0.000)	0.39*** (0.000)
Mining & construction	0.07(0.136)	0.08^† (0.100)
Manufacturing	0.03(0.369)	0.04(0.276)
Transport & communication	0.03(0.343)	0.04(0.277)
Finance/insurance/real estate	−0.15(0.998)	−0.16(0.999)
Public administration	−0.02(0.630)	−0.003(0.486)
Intercept	0.007(0.999)	−0.002(0.998)
R²	0.28	0.46
Random seeds	637	707

Notes: Standardised coefficients are reported, p-values in parentheses. Significance indications: ***p < .001; **p < .01; *p < .05; ^†p < .10.

For control variables, our results showed that board size is highly significant (p<0.001). This confirms that working in larger firms provides the opportunity to meet more people, and particularly persons who are likely to become directors in other top firms. Moreover, in a follow-up analysis, we controlled for Director national origin of non-Swiss directors based on the La Porta et al. (2008) classification of legal origin (British(1), French(2), German(3), Scandinavian(4)); that is, a governance-cultural classification. This allowed ruling out that governance-cultural proximity plays a role in our data.⁶

Concluding comments

This study investigates the relation between demographics, director capital and influence in the corporate elite. Results for the direct effect of gender and nationality on centrality show that there is only very weak evidence of gender differences, and that local (Swiss) directors are significantly more central than foreigners. Results for the interaction models refine these insights and show that social capital contributes more to the centrality of local directors and men, and that human capital contributes more to the centrality of local directors while we do not detect an effect for men compared to women. This suggests that while there may be a relationship between increased presence and increased connectivity in the corporate elite (Kogut et al., 2014), the body count is not sufficient to explain social-relational phenomena such as influence. Relatedly, this questions how much labour market interventions – which mainly focus on body count – can achieve with regards to changing the corporate elite and the afferent job market in the longer term. In what follows, the findings are discussed with regards to efforts to change the corporate elite and the related job market, and research avenues are reflected upon.

Demographics and director capital: A patchy relationship

This article contributes to research aiming to go beyond the body-count approach by showing that a change in demographics alone is insufficient to change the corporate elite. While it has been argued that there is a gradual ‘denationalisation’ of the corporate elite in Switzerland (Davoine et al., 2015) and elsewhere (Davoine and Ravasi, 2013; Djelic and Quack, 2003), Swiss directors hold more influence even if they are in a numerical minority. There is no evidence that this is the case for male versus female directors, contrary to our hypothesis based on previous research. A possible explanation is that, in the absence of institutional pressure, they are not hired as tokens.

This suggests that differences in social-relational outcomes (here influence) in a given employment group (here corporate directors) are not solely attributable to belonging to a numerical majority or minority. This is reminiscent of the ‘Teflon effect’ as coined by Simpson and Kumra (2016); that is, that merit is not ‘sticking’ to women in the way it is sticking to men in leadership positions. This argument is extended here by showing that human and social capital stick best to male, local directors with regards to having influence.

Changing the corporate elite beyond the body count

The findings also show that network composition matters: notably, having a large number of ties to both Swiss and foreign firms plays out positively, rather than government ties or ties through educational institutions as hypothesised elsewhere (see, for example, Lester et al., 2008). Also, it matters to be a director in larger firms/boards. These findings question the thesis that there is an absence or decline of strong centres in national business elites (Heemskerk, 2007), and extend doubt to the capacity for current labour market interventions to change this. Indeed, the results overall show that an increase in body count cannot be directly related to increased influence (as a critical resource to impact decision-making) of non-traditional directors.

As referred to in the introduction, recent work in this journal suggests that a consequence of quota laws can be an expansion of what is considered to be qualifying director capital (Seierstad et al., 2020). However, from this study in a context without such laws, and despite assessing a variety of sources for human and social capital, some forms of capital matter more than others and the same ‘quantity’ of capital does not equally benefit directors having different demographics. This suggests that, for labour market interventions that are not expected to be permanent, requirements for diversity should include but not be limited to consideration about demographics. This also means that changing the corporate elite needs to be addressed from various angles: not only employment, but also governance and/or networking approaches. This aligns with previous findings that outsider status at the individual level is reinforced by the lower value or actionability of one’s social network (Bolíbar et al., 2019). Such recursive phenomena may further delay not only the equal consideration of female and other non-typical candidates for directorship in a male-dominated corporate elite (Bolton and Muzio, 2008), but also their structural and social possibilities of weighing in on decision-making and being directors that matter.

Limitations and research avenues

While the theoretical insights about the relationship between demographics, director capital and influence are broadly relevant, the empirical results about Switzerland may be best transferrable to countries with similar characteristics (size, economic attractivity, director population composition) such as Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Korea or the Netherlands. Also, as women are in a strong minority in our sample, this may hamper the ability to detect significant effects. Relatedly, we could not explore the interaction effects between gender and nationality due to the very small number of Swiss women directors in our sample. Further research could also seek to account for local embeddedness, as some foreigners may be born, raised and educated locally, as well as for recruitment mode, as some directors may be entering the board through mergers and acquisitions rather than through the labour market. Moreover, this study does not account for the role of informal networks, which tend to be gendered (Heemskerk, 2007; Villesèche and Josserand, 2017), and could thus further amplify or decrease detected effects. Also, future research can extend these insights through multi-country studies, or by comparing different time brackets in countries that have implemented targets or quotas. Moreover, the findings suggest that even top firms in a leading economy such as Switzerland are very locally embedded when looking at influence rather than only at ‘numerical’ diversity or at board interlocks, which could lead to governance and performance issues when such companies are operating internationally and need the related input.

Supplemental Material

sj-pdf-1-wes-10.1177_09500170211018579 – Supplemental material for From Presence to Influence: Gender, Nationality and Network Centrality of Corporate Directors

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-wes-10.1177_09500170211018579 for From Presence to Influence: Gender, Nationality and Network Centrality of Corporate Directors by Florence Villesèche and Evis Sinani in Work, Employment and Society

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Sincere thanks to the two anonymous reviewers and editor Daniela Lup, as well as Christoph H Ellersgaard, Lasse F Henriksen and the participants in the ‘Advances in the Study of Corporate Networks’ workshop at Copenhagen Business School, for their insightful and developmental comments on previous versions of this article. We also thank participants in conferences such as AoM and EGOS for their engagement with our earlier drafts.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement 331744.

ORCID iD

Florence Villesèche

Supplementary material

The supplementary material is available online with the article.

Notes

Florence Villesèche is Associate Professor and Academic Director of the Diversity and Difference platform at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. She holds a PhD and MSc in Business Administration as well as an MPhil and MA in Anglophone Studies. Currently a Carlsberg young researcher fellow, she is a Marie Curie fellowship alumna and received an Emerald Award for outstanding doctoral research. Her main research interests are gender and diversity, identity, networks and the corporate elite. Her published works include books, book chapters and articles in journals such as Human Relations, European Management Review, Personnel Review and ephemera.

Evis Sinani is Associate Professor and Academic Director of the Graduate Diploma Program in International Business at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. Her research interests include corporate governance and investment strategies of firms, emerging market multinational enterprises, the management of international joint ventures as well as the relevance of local contexts for the strategies of MNEs in emerging markets. Her research is published in leading international journals such as the Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Comparative Economics, Journal of World Business and Applied Economics.

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