Gender, Board Diversity, and Corporate Crime: Specifying the Relationship between Informal and Formal Crime Control

• In Event: 033 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 09. Inequality and Crime 3

Abstract

In this study, we ask to what extent women comprise board memberships, whether board composition affects corporate offending, and how might board membership change after organizations have suffered negative media coverage associated with violations of law. We are also interested in whether certain types of legal interventions (deterrence versus compliance-based; criminal versus regulatory and civil) or targets (responsible individuals, corporations, or both) are more effective than others at lowering firm reoffending and whether these effects operate directly or indirectly through informal costs to firms and changes in board composition. To explore these questions, we utilize panel data in which firms who have been involved in financial misrepresentation are tracked between the years 1996-2013. Although results are preliminary, we find that the risk of corporate misrepresentation is lowered when more women serve on boards and that, compared with non-offending companies, violating firms tend to make changes in their boards after they have been formally sanctioned but not necessarily toward greater gender inclusivity.

Authors

• Sally S. Simpson, University of Maryland

• Miranda A Galvin

• Gerald Martin, American University

• Debra Shapiro, University of Maryland

• Christine M. Beckman, University of Maryland