Engendering Pro-Sustainable Performance Through a Multi-Layered Gender Diversity Criterion: Evidence From the Hospitality and Tourism Sector

Abstract

This study seeks to examine the influence of multi-layered gender diversity mechanisms on firms’ decision to engage in pro-sustainable performance in the context of Hospitality and Tourism (H&T) firms worldwide. Using Powell’s Panel Quantile Regression (PQR) model, this paper finds that females on boards and sub-boards tend to display a more communal, participative, and democratic leadership style, demonstrating greater responsibilities toward stakeholders’ concerns and engaging with sustainability strategies to make a positive contribution to society. Our findings also reaffirm that women on the boards of H&T firms are more community-oriented and philanthropically driven than women in senior management positions who can be perceived as being profit-oriented rather than stakeholder-oriented as managers. Our results offer implications for policymakers and practitioners, and we suggest several avenues for future studies that could build upon our research.

Does the presence of an environmental committee strengthen the impact of board gender diversity on corporate environmental disclosure? Evidence from sub‐Saharan Africa

“…Following prior CSR/sustainability disclosure and corporate governance literature Nigerian firms, nine Kenyan firms, five Zambian firms and four Ghanaian firms. Second, board gender diversity, in the form of women on boards (WOB), as an independent variable, and the presence of an environmental committee (ENV_CMTE) as a moderator variable, are also measured using the Bloomberg dataset (Gerged, Tran, & Beddewela, 2022). Third, in an attempt to address any omitted variablesrelated issues (Wooldridge, 2016), this study employs a set of control variables that reflect corporate governance mechanisms and other firm-specific characteristics and country-level features, which were chosen with reference to previous studies (see Baldini et al, 2018;Crifo & Forget, 2015;Fifka, 2013;Gerged, Beddewela, & Cowton, 2021a;Hassan, Roberts, & Atkins, 2020).…”

“…To address possible endogeneity concerns, we employ a two‐step dynamic GMM model (Blundell & Bond, 1998), which has been used to complement PQR in other studies (e.g., Alvarado et al, 2021; Bruna et al, 2021; Gerged et al, 2022). First, we use the Durbin test and Wu–Hausman test to detect the potential incidence of endogeneity problems in individual regressors.…”

Religious, contextual and media influence: determinants of the representation of female tour guides in travel agencies

“…However, tourism and hospitality organizations are gendered (Sinclair, 1997); socio-cultural norms support a hypermasculine operational structure, despite often having “zero tolerance” of gender discrimination in the strategy of most organizations. Few tourism agencies mainstream gender equality in their policy, budget and operational strategy (Gerged et al , 2022), and even when they do, they overlook that men and women have distinct needs, priorities and solutions. Discrimination against female tourism workers is not uncommon; they are mostly limited to unskilled or marginalized job types, underrepresented in leadership and professional positions and earn less than their male counterparts (Kabil et al , 2022; Dashper, 2020; Ferguson and Alarcon, 2015; Mousa, 2021b).…”

Estimating the Risk of Financial Distress Using a Multi-Layered Governance Criterion: Insights from Middle Eastern and North African Banks

“…Indeed, strong CG practices effectively prevent corporations from being too exposed to financial distress and bankruptcy (Zhou 2019). Abdullah (2006) contends that adequate corporate governance mechanisms strengthen companies' performance (Gerged et al 2022b(Gerged et al , 2022c and protect them against the risk of financial distress. Crucially, suitable corporate governance mechanisms can help management to maintain better financial information quality to protect firms from potential financial distress.…”