Gender balance on boards: Stakeholders identification

Abstract

Recent Spanish law and regulations have turned gender balance on Boards of Directors into a necessary element to manage in companies. The aim of this paper is to identify the stakeholders demanding such gender balance to companies, according to the Methodology of Mitchell et al. (1997) and Agle et al. (1999). The results sugest the shareholders are the most important group, so it seems that the financial goals continue being a priority. But we also observe that the Government is perceived as a very important stakeholder. Despite managers acknowledge the Government has a lot of power, its importance is explained by urgency and legitimacy attributes. This fact makes us doubting about the effectiveness of any development of a compulsory law, beyond the current one.

Keywords

• Gender Balance
• Female Managers
• Stakeholders Theory
• Corporative Government
• Corporate Social Responsibility