Call For Papers
A Special Issue and Dutch Central Bank/CGIR Workshop - Board Diversity

December 19th -20th, 2013, Dutch Central Bank, Amsterdam

Keynote Speakers:
Ruth Aguilera, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Daniel Ferreira, London School of Economics and Political Science

OVERVIEW: Board diversity represents both challenges and opportunities for board practice and research. Although intuition suggests diversity should be a key input to effective governance, boards remain remarkably homogenous and quite stable in their make-up. As a result, gender diversity has become a topic of active policy making in many countries, with some national governments establishing quotas for publicly traded and/or state owned enterprises and others merely offering guidelines for diversity. But it is not clear how and whether these policies will have the desired outcomes, because academic research has not been able to demonstrate a clear relationship between board diversity and effective board performance. One reason may be that it is not clear which concept of diversity is important. For example, organizational behavior distinguishes between surface and deep-level diversity. In this literature there is an extensive debate about the antecedents, relevant dimensions and implications of board diversity with a focus on social categorization processes that may increase conflict and diminish performance. Another reason may be the endogenous nature of corporate boards in general and board diversity, in particular, which is a focus of the economics and finance literature. Finally, the board process literature suggests that the implications of board diversity can best be understood by analyzing behavioral processes.

AIM:
- The aim of the special issue is to feature cutting-edge research pertaining to board diversity that will help inform the policy debate. By drawing on the latest research in psychology, sociology, finance, management, law, corporate governance, and entrepreneurship, the special issue seeks to build bridges between theoretical and empirical perspectives on diversity and to highlight the implications of various types of diversity for effective governance.

- The aim of the workshop is to provide a stimulating environment in which academics can discuss their work and interact with policy makers. To provide a basis for discussion, the conference will feature keynote speakers and a policy panel on women in finance. The policy panel is TBD. De Nederlandsche Bank (The Dutch Central Bank), in particular, but not exclusively, invites submissions of scholarly papers that address topics of diversity related to boards in financial institutions.

POTENTIAL TOPICS: For the workshop and special issue we invite submissions on a broad variety of related topics. A non-exclusive list of themes includes:
- Board diversity and corporate performance
- Board diversity and board dynamics
- Board diversity and board input
- Board diversity and effective governance
- Determinants of board diversity
- Dimensions of diversity in boards and its implications for effective governance
- Women on boards
- Women in finance
- Comparative institutional analyses of board diversity
- Socio-political analyses of board diversity
- Methodological aspects related to board diversity (e.g. construct validity, measurement, endogeneity)

PAPER SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: Papers should be submitted through the CGIR submissions website http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cgir by September 1 2013. Please be sure to indicate that the submission is for the special issue on Board Diversity.
- Papers submitted to the special issue will go through the same review process as regular CGIR submissions.
- Authors who do not wish to have their papers considered for the special issue should send their papers directly to Jacob de Haan at J.de.Haan@DNB.NL

CONFERENCE AND SPECIAL ISSUE GUEST EDITORS:
Renee Adams, University of New South Wales
Hans van Ees, University of Groningen
Jakob de Haan, De Nederlandsche Bank (Dutch Central Bank)
Siri Terjesen, Indiana University

FUNDING: The Dutch Central Bank will provide some funding for workshop attendees upon request. Authors should e-mail Jacob de Haan at J.de.Haan@DNB.NL to express their interest in travel support.