Female CEOs, Returns and Risk in Spanish Publishing Firms

• Date: 01 March 2018
• Published date: 01 March 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12132

Female CEOs, Returns and Risk in Spanish

Publishing Firms

JUAN FRANCISCO MARTÍN-UGEDO,

1

ANTONIO MÍNGUEZ-VERA

1

and LUIS PALMA-MARTOS

2

1

University of Murcia, Spain

2

University of Seville, Spain

This study examines the influence of CEO gender on returns and risk for a sample of 2,157 Spanish publishing

firms in 2013. The publishing sector is relevant in Spain, in terms of output, because of its positive contribution to

the cultural sector’s trade balance and also because it plays a key strategic role in a knowledge-based society.

Previous evidence suggests that women in senior management position affect the performance of firms and also

the level of risk that the firm is exposed to. Our results show that publishing companies whose CEO is female have

greater returns. This result is observed when both the return on assets and the return on equity are considered as

the dependent variable. When we focus on risk, we find a lower debt level and lower financial leverage when the

CEO is a woman.

Keywords: gender; publishing firms; performance; return; risk

Introduction

Women in leadership positions have become a topical

issue in the socialdomain as well as in the academic field.

As a result, over the last fewyears there has been pressure

from society to include women in key posts in firms. For

instance, the average number of women sitting on boards

of directors has risenthroughout Europe, although female

representation remains low compared to the USA, and

major differences exist between countries (Heidrick and

Struggles, 2014).

The impact of women in topmanagement positions has

been the subject of many studies. These studies have

analysed the impact of having a female in the highest

management positions on different aspects of

management, such as decision-making (e.g. Nielsen and

Huse, 2010), risk-taking (e.g. Jianakoplos and Bernasek,

1998), managing (e.g. Loden, 1985) and environmental

policies (e.g. Kassinis et al., 2016). The evidence shows

that women can play an important role in labour practices

and, consequently, have an impact on company

performance (Kesner, 1988; Bilimoria and Piderit, 1994;

Daily et al., 1999; Farrell and Hersch, 2005).

Nevertheless,evidence relating to the linkbetween gender

and financial performance remains scant (Carter et al.,

2010). To our knowledge, as pointed out below, there is

very little previous evidence focusing on the influence of

the CEO gender on the performance of a company (return

and risk) (Jalbert et al., 2013; Khan and Vieito, 2013;

Faccio et al., 2016), and no previousevidence addressing

this topic in the publishing sector.

The cultural sector in Spain is important for at least two

reasons. Firstis its size, both in terms of its contribution to

GDP, 2.5%, or 3.4% if all economic activities linked to

intellectual property are taken into account, and of

employment, 2.8% of all employment (MECD, 2014a).

The second reason is the key strategic role which the

culturalsector plays in a knowledge-basedsociety. In such

a society, culture based creativity is one of the

fundamental cornerstones of innovation and growth

(KEA, 2009; Martins and Terblanche, 2003).

Within the broad field that is the cultural sector, our

study explores the impact of CEO gender on returns and

risk in the publishing industry. This sector represents an

average of 1% of national GDP and 38.2% of cultural

GDP over the period from 2008 to 2012, according to

the Satellite Account on Culture in Spain (MECD,

2014b). There is a 2.8% drop in this figure during that

period. In early 2013, the Central Business Register

(Spanish acronym –DIRCE, 2013) reported that 8,326

Correspondence: Juan Francisco Martín-Ugedo, Facultad de Economía y

Empresa,Universidadde Murcia, 30100 Espinardo,Murcia, Spain.E-mail:

juanfran@um.es

European Management Review, Vol. 15, 111–120, (2018)

DOI: 10.1111/emre.12132

©2017 European Academy of Management