Women in management and sustainable development of SMEs: Do relational environmental management instruments matter?

Johan Graafland

Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 2020, vol. 27, issue 5, 2320-2328

Abstract: Scientific literature on the relationship between gender diversity in management and sustainability of large companies has produced mixed results. Whether and how gender diversity stimulates the sustainable development of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) has not yet been researched. We hypothesize that having more women in management positions improves the sustainability of SMEs, because this encourages the use of relational environmental management instruments. Small business literature has shown this type of instrument to be more effective in improving the sustainability of SMEs than bureaucratic management instruments. We test the model on a sample of 3,663 European SMEs and find support for this hypothesis. However, the effect is nonlinear and sustainability reaches its maximum when the proportion of women managers is 54%. The management implication is that SMEs can improve their sustainability by a gender balanced management team.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.1966

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:corsem:v:27:y:2020:i:5:p:2320-2328

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().