The Gender Diversity–Firm Performance Relationship by Industry Type and Inclusiveness: An Empirical Study of Japanese Firms

Abstract

This research is unique because it presents empirical evidence testing whether increasing gender diversity is associated with improved firm performance for Japanese listed companies, which have different cultural backgrounds from Western companies, after controlling for size and firm age. As Worthley et [1] point out that the growing importance of the Japanese female workforce under global competition requires a better understanding of gender-related issues in organizational management which is undergoing a transformation from their rooted traditional managerial habits, such as seniority-based promotion, lifetime employment, paternalism, or prioritizing corporate harmony, which favor men. We find statistically significant positive relationships between managerial gender diversity and one measure of firm performance, Tobin’s q, without a long time lag required for it to be realized.  We find, similarly to Siegel and Kodama [2], that manufacturing firms benefit significantly and sensitively to a greater extent from increasing managerial gender diversity as compared to those in the service industries, and moreover the curvature of this relationship is significantly greater for manufacturers.  Having established a committee for diversity promotion by 2006 did not show any impact on firm performance per se, even by 2012, but it did magnify the effect of gender diversity on Tobin’s q, providing support for Pless and Maak’s [3] conjecture that a culture of inclusiveness is required for the benefits accruing to gender diversity to truly be realized

Key words: Gender diversity, Inclusiveness, Organizational performance, Manufacturing industry, Services industry, Inclusiveness.