In a new study, Professor Walid Ben Amar from the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa and his co-authors evaluated how a combination of socio-economic, individual, and legal factors influence gender diversity in the composition of board of directors.

An imperative but slow climb

Research has shown that companies clearly benefit from female representation on corporate boards, as a diverse executive team leads to better innovation, increased awareness about corporate social responsibility, and improved profitability. However, corporate boards are still largely dominated by men.

Worldwide, women accounted for 17.7% of corporate board seats of large companies in 2018, while about 50% of firms, on average, had only one woman or no female representation in their boardrooms. Canadian companies similarly lack gender diversity - in 2018, women held only 16.4% of board seats.

In the past, researchers tried to explain this gender gap on corporate boards by looking at how background, perceptions and stereotypes, as well as firm size, industry type, and societal factors, impact board diversity. However, very few scholars have focused on how a combination of socio-economic, emancipative, and legal factors increases or lowers board gender diversity.

A comprehensive analysis

A better understanding of the drivers of board gender diversity is crucial if society is committed to increasing opportunities for female leadership. It is precisely for this reason that Professor Ben Amar and his co-authors evaluated the impact of three key factors on board gender diversity:

• Socio-economic: action resources, such as women’s access to health care, education and employment opportunities;
• Individual: emancipative values such as gender equality, autonomy, tolerance, and inclusion; and
• Legal: civic entitlements such as equality, freedom and non-discrimination rights.

In “Empowering Women: The Role of Emancipative Forces in Board Gender Diversity,” an article recently published in the Journal of Business Ethics, the research team analyzed an extensive database of over 60,000 corporate board members from close to 6,500 publicly traded companies based in 30 different countries. Here are their main findings:

• Women’s access to action resources positively influences female board participation. When women have access to these resources, they are more likely to assume leadership roles on corporate boards.
• Emancipative values also help close the gender gap in this context. Women are likely to feel supported in their choices and pursue leadership positions on corporate boards if society widely promotes gender inclusion, equality, autonomy, and tolerance.
• Civic entitlements transform emancipative values into laws and regulations, thereby enabling a larger number of women to become board members.
• Female board representation is highest in countries where women have more access to a combination of the three factors.
• To reduce the gender gap on corporate boards, these three factors must have an impact on the lives of both women and their male colleagues.
• Once the gender gap starts to narrow, female role models are more likely to motivate other aspiring female leaders to join corporate boards. Female board representation is greater in companies whose boards are chaired by a woman, confirming that when female leaders act as role models and mentors to other women, they will aspire to join corporate boardrooms in greater numbers.

Why policy-makers should care

Companies not only need female talent on their corporate boards but should also create a nurturing and respective environment that encourages women leaders to join corporate boards. Professor Ben Amar’s study reminds us that favoring greater gender diversity on corporate boards can have a positive impact on the economy:

“Gender-diverse boards contribute to more effective corporate governance practices and better economic results. Research explains this outcome through the positive effect female directors can have on the quality of board deliberations, the available pool of knowledge, and the input to corporate strategy development: they are, on average, better prepared for the deliberations and exhibit better attendance of board meetings than their male colleagues.”

Professor Ben Amar also advises that more action is required at the policy level for increased board gender diversity to become the norm:

“We believe that it is important from a public policy perspective to promote women’s empowerment to foster their desire to explore business opportunities and access corporate leadership positions. Regulatory initiatives that intend to enhance female empowerment in a society might not only have a positive impact on corporate financial performance but also on corporate awareness about social and environmental issues.”

Researchers from the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management used advanced analytics to develop a novel optimization model. Their model can help health organizations better coordinate services offered to elderly patients whose health needs can be met through community care.

Capacity challenges faced by health organizations in Canada

By 2009, over 50,000 patients faced prolonged hospital stays due to delays in arranging the appropriate post-discharge care. These delays accounted for 16% of total patient days in all Ontario hospitals. This number dropped to 14% in 2013, but has stubbornly refused to go lower since then. Post-discharge care delays increase occupancy rates of ward beds, cause emergency room overcrowding, and affect surgery scheduling.

These delays can also compromise the quality and delivery of care for elderly patients who have been discharged from acute treatment and should be transferred to more appropriate community care, such as the patient’s home, an independent living arrangement, or a long-term care facility. As a result, these patients often stay in a hospital bed much longer than needed.

“In Canada, the challenge of managing services for this group of patients has become perhaps the most significant impediment to running acute care efficiently,” explains Jonathan Patrick, Full Professor at the Telfer School.

However, developing a capacity plan that takes into account the integrated nature of community care services is not as easy as we tend to think. Any increase in capacity in one service may lead to unanticipated changes in demand in another. In a scenario where it is critical to address capacity shortage as an integrated system rather than a single service, how can health organizations better coordinate care for elderly patients?

A new tool for health organizations

Professor Patrick and his Telfer School-led team of researchers, Hadi Mohammadi Bidhandi, Pedram Noghani, and Peyman Varshoei used the power of analytics to address this major concern in health organizations. The team developed a novel optimization model that not only predicts how waiting times are likely to grow or decrease across community care services but also determines an optimized capacity plan that will help organizations meet their performance targets. The researchers shared the results of their study in “Capacity planning for a network of community health services,” an article recently published in the European Journal of Operational Research.

“Our model recognizes the integrated nature of community care services and thus optimally allocates capacity across the entire network to better ensure access to the right care at the right time,” explains Professor Patrick.

The researchers tested their new model using three years worth of data from Champlain LHIN and validated the results through a simulation of community care services:

“The results of the simulation offer a very realistic setting and eventually contribute to the manager’s willingness to adopt the new configuration,” explains co-author Varshoei, a PhD student at the Telfer School.

Impact: supporting health organizations to improve patient care

The researchers understand that it may not be easy to implement such a novel model, as it requires dramatic changes in how health organizations manage and plan for their capacity. Nevertheless, Professor Patrick stresses that the model provides significant advantages:

“If we could innovate and create from scratch a system that appropriately builds capacity in line with the actual flow of patients through the network of care, it is clear from our work that bigger investment in community care services could possibly result in managing acute care demand with less hospital beds than currently exists. This would benefit both patients and health organizations by providing better care at lower cost,” explains Professor Patrick.

 

About the Telfer School of Management's Innovative Thinking

Innovative Thinking is a new platform created to share the latest in knowledge development at Telfer School of Management with the community, academics, and potential research collaborators. Be inspired by a selection of innovative research ideas, from articles published by our faculty in top-management journals to award-winning research projects. Telfer School’s Innovative Thinking shows our commitment towards research excellence without losing sight of our impactful role in the community.

Suppose clinicians want to predict whether a patient will experience post-operative complications. Though they have detailed physiological data on previous patients and their own experience and expertise to guide them, assessing potential risks can be difficult at best. Enter Enea Parimbelli, Szymon Wilk, and Wojtek Michalowski from the Mobile Emergency Triage Research Group at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management. Their research focuses on using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to transform healthcare practices. 

Working alongside critical care specialists and surgeons at The Ottawa Hospital they developed two AI-powered tools to help clinicians make better informed decisions to improve patient care.

One of the tools they developed uses AI – specifically a machine learning method that teaches computers to learn from data, as humans do naturally – enabling them to look for patterns in patient data. Using the electronic health records of several thousands of patients and working alongside Dr. Steven Kingwell, a surgeon at The Ottawa Hospital, the research team used various advanced machine learning methods to assess the data and identify the most exact outcomes. This tool now allows them to create accurate prediction models for post-surgical complications, helping surgeons identify which patients might require additional care following their procedure.

Another AI-powered tool developed by Parimbelli, Wilk and Michalowski, was created together with Dr. Peter Reardon and Dr. Kwadwo Kyeremanteng – both intensive care physicians at the Ottawa Hospital, to help the Rapid Response Team (RRT) predict chances of survival of in-hospital patients experiencing an acute episode that might require intensive care. The RRT is composed of an intensive care physician, a critical care nurse, and a respiratory therapist. They are called to a patient’s bedside when their health significantly deteriorates to a point where there is consideration of transferring them to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). With the new tool the RRT can quickly assess a patient’s condition and decide on the best course of action – a transfer to the ICU or stabilize and stay on the ward.

Having this AI-powered tool helps the RRT make the right decision very quickly, despite being in life-threatening situations and the fact that the team has little or no previous medical knowledge of the patient.

“Good AI-powered prediction models come from a concerted team effort,” explains Michalowski. “Physicians are like orchestra conductors; they play a leading role with support from the AI experts and health informaticians, who are the musicians in this analogy. If they don’t all work together and if some play to their own tune, it will result in cacophony. A strong prediction model is built when the entire team plays in harmony.”

By working with front line health practitioners, the MET Research Group is harnessing the power of new AI technologies to create next-gen health research that directly impacts patient care and health outcomes.

A new article published by Assistant Professor José Carlos Marques from the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa and his co-author Johnny Boghossian from Université Laval examines the political dynamics surrounding standard-setting multi-stakeholder initiatives. The authors show how these initiatives might be utilized as strategic resources by governments that seek to defend a sensitive national industry against activist groups. Their project has received an Insight Development grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

Standard-setting multi-stakeholder initiatives

Standard-setting multi-stakeholder initiatives are voluntary collaborative schemes often created by non-government organizations and private companies as a way of addressing major social, political and environmental challenges. These initiatives ensure that member organizations are committed to creating products and providing services that comply with a set of standards that cover everything from the quality and safety of a product to the company’s commitment to be sustainable, transparent, and equitable.

Since the 1990s, multi-stakeholders initiatives have become popular forms of regulating businesses across different industries and countries. According to a report prepared by the Institute for Multi-Stakeholder Initiative Integrity and the Duke Human Rights Center at the Kenan Institute for Ethics, multi-stakeholder initiatives operate in over 170 countries, engage over 50 national governments, and regulate over 9,000 companies.

Their standards have also been increasingly incorporated into government policy. However, the extent to which governments use or influence these initiatives, as well as the consequences of such involvement remains unclear. Are multi-stakeholder initiatives as inclusive and politically neutral as they are claimed to be?

Protecting a national industry against activist reactions

This is a key question that Professor Marques and his co-author addressed in their article entitled “Saving the Canadian Fur Industry’s Hide: Government’s strategic use of private authority to constrain radical activism” published in Organizational Studies. The researchers suggest that standard setting multi-stakeholder initiatives may be used as an instrument by governments trying to reduce the impact of activist groups’ pressure on sensitive industries.

Marques and his co-author were particularly interested in how governments create multi-stakeholder initiatives and use their private standards to protect a national industry that becomes the target of activist groups. The authors compared two cases in which the Canadian government responded to international activist campaigns against sensitive industries.

In the first case, the Canadian government employed a conventional policy and diplomacy approach to fight the transnational anti-sealing campaign during the 1980s. The government did not succeed and the sealing industry collapsed. In the second case, in reaction to the anti-fur trapping campaign and the possibility of a European Union ban on Canadian trapped fur products in the 1990s, the government used an unconventional but successful approach.

The researchers found that the Canadian government effectively mobilized a counter-response that centered on the development of an international humane fur-trapping standard under the auspices of the International Organization for Standards (ISO). The resulting ISO standard formed the basis for an inter-governmental agreement that secured export markets for Canada’s trapped fur industry.

Research impact

This study contributes to the debate about the effectiveness, legitimacy and political role of multi-stakeholder initiatives. They are often promoted as inclusive and objective decision-making forums that offer multiple stakeholders, including activists, the opportunity to influence the development of standards. However, the authors suggest that these initiatives actually discriminate between types of activists, watering down the demands of those with a more radical agenda:

“Multi-stakeholder initiatives are more likely to empower activists who want to reform an industry’s practices and whose agenda is aligned to political and economic elites and institutions. The flipside is that they may be used to marginalize radical activists that threaten dominant interests,” explains Professor Marques.

In a follow-up project funded by SSHRC, the researchers will continue examining why and how governments become involved with multi-stakeholder initiatives and how these interactions affect activist campaigns.