۱- Introduction

۲- Gender diversity, corporate performance and emotional intelligence: conceptual triangle

۳- Methodology

۴- Results

۵- Conclusions

References

Abstract

This work aims to explore the status of gender diversity in corporate governance and its implications to corporate performance and emotional intelligence. With this purpose, the role of women in leading modern corporations and the pending gaps in equality were analyzed. Tourist corporations composed the sample of firms, due to its growing economic impact in a post-global financial crisis scenario. The study sample is comprised by the 118 companies listed at the STOXX® Global 3000 Travel & Leisure. Financial and corporate governance data provided by Reuters.com, were used for the period ending 2017. Additional data on corporate governance of each entity were gathered from official corporate website of each firm. We designed ad hoc indicators for gender diversity, along with differences in salary and seniority. Special attention was paid to the specific position held by women in each board, and its relationship to emotional intelligence, as a first step to a full research agenda. The results suggested very relevant gap in the three analyzed dimensions: presence, salary and seniority. Women tend to be focused only on several corporate tasks like those related to marketing and human resources management. This bias, which in a first view can be considered an additional manifestation of gender gap, is at the same time an opportunity to link modern corporations to a new style of management in which approaches like emotional intelligence could play a most prominent role. This research contributes in two different ways: (1) it demonstrate the enormous gap still existing between men and women at the top of tourist organizations worldwide and (2) it suggests several research pathways given the type of gender gap detected.

Introduction

Companies, in particular listed corporations, face a strong requirement, even more in a post-crisis scenario, to be accountable for their performance. Shareholders are not the only public to inform. There exists a wide range of interest groups, such as customers, suppliers, employees, public agencies, among others, who do not simply intend to accomplish their traditional expectations, but they also wish to interact with companies that perform in an ethic and responsible way. Gender equality is a major issue in modern management, both public and private. There are two basic principles that complement eachother:thefirst consist of social justice, which leads to providing women with the same opportunities as men in terms of access to jobs, including senior management, subsequently implementing actions of positive discrimination to solve disadvantages ofthe past. The second principle is the growing evidence in academic and business literature that when teams in general, and management boards in particular, are more diverse, also in terms of gender, firms experiment a significant business enhancement. Both realities can play the role of market signaling by the firms, in order to capture the attention of a growing crowd of more responsible investors, commercial allies, potential candidates for key job positions, etc. (Srivastava, McInish, Wood, & Capraro, 1997).