Is there a compensation gap between female CEOs and male CEOs? If so, are there mechanisms to mitigate the compensation gap? Extending role congruity theory, we argue that the perception mismatch between the female gender role and the leadership role may lead to lower compensation to female CEOs, resulting in a gender compensation gap. Nevertheless, the compensation gap may be narrowed if female CEOs display agentic traits through risk-taking, or alternatively, work in female-dominated industries where communal traits are valued. Additionally, (...) we expect that female CEOs’ risk-taking is less effective in reducing the gender compensation gap in female-dominated industries due to the conflicting emphases on agentic and communal traits. Leveraging a sample of Chinese publicly listed firms, we find support for our hypotheses. Overall, this study contributes to the ethics literature on income inequality issues, by highlighting the effectiveness of potential mechanisms to close the gender compensation gap between female and male CEOs. (shrink)

AbstractBoardroom backscratching, or cronyism, is an unethical practice where CEOs conspire with directors to receive remuneration beyond performance- and market-related factors. Premised on the theory of planned behavior, this study investigates whether CEO generalist experience magnifies the likelihood of boardroom backscratching. Using 9482 firm-year observations spanning 1999–2018, our analysis shows that firms with greater CEO generalist managerial experience are more likely to engage in boardroom backscratching, via both cash- and equity-based compensation. We provide further evidence that backscratching firms with CEOs (...) that possess greater generalist experience tend to overinvest, particularly via non-capital expenditure, as a channel for empire building and private rent extraction. We also find that a higher portion of female independent directors sitting on the board and the compensation committee mitigates the positive relationship between CEO generalist managerial experience and boardroom backscratching, which we attribute to greater ethicality of, and increased monitoring exercised by, female independent directors. (shrink)

This study extends previous literature on the association between Confucianism and corporate decisions by examining Confucianism’s influence on board gender diversity. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms during the period of 2001–2011 and geographic-proximity-based Confucianism variables, I provide strong and consistent evidence to show that Confucianism is significantly negatively associated with board gender diversity, suggesting that the proportion of women directors in the boardroom is significantly lower for firms surrounded by strong Confucianism atmosphere than for firms located in regions (...) with weak Confucianism atmosphere. This finding also implies that Confucian philosophical system has important impacts on business ethics and women’s status in corporate governance. Moreover, GDP per capita, the proxy for economic development level in a province in which a firm is located, attenuates the negative association between Confucianism and board gender diversity. Above results are robust to different measures of Confucianism and board gender diversity and are still valid after controlling for the potential endogeneity between Confucianism and board gender diversity. (shrink)