Study shows gender wage gap exists among CEO board directors
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Do organizations truly value more diverse boards of directors? A new study suggests many firms may only be paying lip service to the importance of diversity and increasing board diversity in superficial ways.
A new paper in the journal Human Resource Management explores whether external pressures to diversify boards lead organizations to devalue the board memberships held by female CEOs relative to male CEOs and, as a result, pay female CEOs less for these roles. After an exhaustive examination of numerous corporate boards during a period spanning more than a decade, researchers found that companies that engage in token female representation tend to pay female CEO directors less than their male counterparts.
Winny Shen
Schulich School of Business organization studies Professor Winny Shen and her collaborators, Shavin Malhotra from the University of Waterloo, and PengCheng Zhu from the University of San Diego, examined the relationships between CEO gender, board memberships, and pay in S&P 1500 firms from 2007 to 2019. After controlling for a number of potential alternative explanations, they found that female CEOs receive less compensation for being directors than male CEOs.
Unexpectedly, this gap in compensation was most apparent in organizations that had boards with greater female representation. The study also revealed that this gender pay gap disappeared when female board directors chaired more important and powerful committees.
“Our study points to the importance of moving beyond mere presence to ensuring women have power on boards,” says Shen. “We need to make sure that organizations are not inviting women to be on boards simply to be symbols or tokens. This seems to create a vicious cycle where others assume that female CEOs, who are also directors, should not be rewarded for engaging in these roles because they are not there legitimately, thereby reinforcing gender inequality in the workplace.”
New study shows people are not as financially responsible as they believe
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Researchers from York University’s Schulich School of Business, the University of Notre Dame, and University of New England have published a paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines why people under-save, and provides a simple, short and inexpensive intervention that helps them increase their personal savings.
The researchers created something they termed a “superfluous-spender intervention” that influenced people to believe they were not saving as well as they believed. Across a series of six experiments, they showed that people receiving the superfluous-spender intervention increased both their intentions to save and increased their actual savings relative to those who do not receive the intervention. According to the researchers, “the intervention increases saving by inducing one’s desire to restore diminished perceptions of financial responsibility.”
The research paper is authored by Nicole Mead, associate professor of marketing at Schulich; Emily Garbinsky, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business; and Daniel Gregg, a senior research fellow at the University of New England in Australia.
“This research has the potential to improve people’s lives in these challenging times,” says Mead. “My co-authors and I have developed a simple, inexpensive and easy-to-implement intervention that can help people to save more money.
“Before the pandemic hit, many countries were reporting record low saving rates and record high debt loads. The pandemic made clear to both households and governments the importance of having an emergency savings fund. Hopefully, expediting saving will continue to be a prominent conversation in the lives of people around the world.”
Researchers peg success of high-profile healthcare facility on people and vision
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Bridgepoint is a 464-bed rehabilitation and complex care hospital in Toronto. (Photo provided by HDR in partnership with Diamond Schmitt, Stantec, and KPMB Architects; Copyright: Tom Arban Photography)
It’s not every day that a hospital, on the brink of termination, is reborn. It’s a complex endeavour. You need a water-tight value proposition, proving there’s a void to be filled, as well as healthy finances and stakeholder buy in. Pinpointing the most effective systems and partnerships in this mammoth undertaking would be helpful – priceless, in fact – as this information could inform similar operations by providing a template for success in public management and infrastructure governance.
Enter Sessional Instructor Sherena Hussain and Professor James McKellar of the Schulich School of Business. They carried out just such a venture; they conducted a case study of Bridgepoint Active Healthcare, a 464-bed rehabilitation and complex care hospital affiliated with the University of Toronto, which re-opened its doors in April 2013. Now part of the Sinai Health System, Bridgepoint is the single largest organization in Canada to focus exclusively on research, care and teaching for people with complex health conditions.
Sherena Hussain and James McKellar
In wondering what made this reimagined hospital such a triumph, the researchers focused on the use of public-private partnerships (PPP) for social infrastructure. They discovered success with PPPs was about people; Hussain and McKellar’s research uncovered the role of personalities, relationships and strong leadership in bringing a successful project to fruition in the face of complex, intersecting challenges.
“The PPP is only one variable in explaining the overall success of this complex and highly visible social infrastructure project,” Hussain explains.
The findings of this research were published in Public Works Management & Policy (2020).
Bridgepoint is a 464-bed rehabilitation and complex care hospital in Toronto. (Photo provided by HDR in partnership with Diamond Schmitt, Stantec, and KPMB Architects; copyright: Tom Arban Photography)
Bridgepoint almost closed in 1997
Healthcare is a high-stakes sector. There have been, historically, tensions between hospitals, seeking to retain independence, and the province. Ontario exclusively funds the delivery of healthcare services including hospitals, although doctors remain as private entities. Hospitals are run by independent boards of directors that oversee the quality of patient care and undertake complex building programs, etc. (Canadian Medical Association).
The case of Bridgepoint was a nail-biter: In 1997, the Ontario government planned to close the existing hospital and transfer its patients to other long-term care facilities. Marian Walsh, Bridgepoint’s then president and CEO, faced a formidable challenge: How to save Bridgepoint. She did it and, as Hussain and McKellar prove, how she did it is well worth studying.
How did the researchers approach their work?
Hussain and McKellar first conducted a literature and archival review of key policy submissions, project documents, private sector agreements and financial disclosures spanning back to late 1990s.
Following this, the two conducted over 40 semi-structured interviews, from 2013 to 2019, with government officials, hospital board members and senior management, private contractors, advisors, politicians and stakeholders involved in Bridgepoint.
Four ingredients to the success of Bridgepoint
Through this rigorous analysis, Hussain and McKellar determined that there were four ingredients that contributed to the success of Bridgepoint’s rebirth, under Walsh’s oversight, which involved the ambitious construction of a new facility.
Approved site plan for Bridgepoint Active Healthcare (Urban Strategies, 2004; Lewingberg, 2004) Permission to reproduce image from Urban Strategies
Ingredient 1: A social license to operate
A social license refers to ongoing acceptance of an institution or company’s business practices and procedures by its employees, stakeholders and the general public. It exists when a project has overarching approval within the local community and broad social acceptance. This was something that Walsh recognized and emphasized.
“The result is that community members become advocates of the project as they consider themselves to be co-owners and emotionally vested in the future of the project; such is the strength of self-identification,” said a member of Bridgepoint staff in a 2016 interview.
Ingredient 2: Strong leadership
Walsh provided strong leadership that “embodied in clarity of purpose, tenacity, interpersonal skills, effective communication skills, management of governing bodies, and a vision,” McKellar emphasizes.
Walsh was respected by many stakeholders and became “the glue among the project components that transcended legal agreements,” according to a Mount Sinai senior executive interviewed in 2015.
Ingredient 3: A clear vision
The vision for success was driven by two fundamental pledges, say Hussain and McKellar: a commitment to a hospital environment that directly addressed the special needs of various stakeholders, and a commitment to a surrounding community in need of economic and social renewal.
This new facility served an important symbolic as well as functional role. (Photo provided by HDR in partnership with Diamond Schmitt, Stantec, and KPMB Architects; copyright: Tom Arban Photography)
Ingredient 4: An architectural statement that embodies the vision
This new facility, featured in many architectural publications, served an important symbolic as well as functional role, extending beyond the physical buildings.
In realizing the merits of Bridgepoint and analyzing its success, the researchers provide tips for future ventures in public management – be they in the healthcare or other sectors. “The facility was instrumental in stimulating community-level revival and health care transformation, while also assisting in Bridgepoint’s strategic positioning and serving as a template for future social infrastructure,” Hussain states.
To learn more about Research & Innovation at York, follow us at @YUResearch; watch our new animated video, which profiles current research strengths and areas of opportunity, such as Artificial Intelligence and Indigenous futurities; and see the snapshot infographic, a glimpse of the year’s successes.
By Megan Mueller, senior manager, Research Communications, Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, York University, muellerm@yorku.ca
New study shows customer attitudes influenced by how salespeople talk
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One of life’s most common complaints is frustration with customer service. Generic statements like, “Did you find everything you’re looking for?”, “Can I help you?”, or “Anything else today?” can make the customer feel like they’re just another cog in the wheel of big business – that nobody is actually listening to their personal needs. With the pandemic, now more than ever, the few human conversations customers have with businesses are even more important.
New studies published in the February 2021 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research explore how a subtle aspect of how people talk – known as linguistic concreteness – can have an important impact on customers’ attitudes, purchase intentions, and even their actual purchases.
Grant Packard
Imagine shopping for a shirt in a store. A salesperson that stops by may refer to that object concretely (e.g., “shirt” or “blouse”), abstractly (e.g., “that”) or somewhere in between (e.g., “item,” “top” or “clothing”). While these may seem like trivial variations, Schulich School of Business marketing professor Grant Packard, and Jonah Berger from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, predict these subtle differences could translate into increased sales and improved customer satisfaction.
“We thought that by actually saying the specific things the customer is interested in, or by making your own actions more tangible and ‘real,’ employees might signal they’re paying attention or actually doing something for that customer,” explains Packard.
Packard and Berger first analyzed the content of over 1,000 real customer service interactions from two different companies, one based in the U.S. and the other in Canada. For the first company, they transcribed audio recordings from over 19 hours of customer service calls, and then analyzed the language using computational linguistics methods. Results indicated a significant increase in satisfaction when agents used more concrete words, even after controlling for over 30 alternative factors.
The second data set looked at email-based service interactions for an online retailer and found that more concrete agent language was linked to higher customer purchase volume following the interaction, even after controlling for a similarly large number of alternative explanations. While the authors urge caution in assuming these results would sustain for everyone, a one standard deviation (roughly 33 per cent) increase in concreteness improved satisfaction by nine per cent and actual spending by at least 13 per cent for these firms.
The researchers then ran a series of experiments to try to determine when and why linguistic concreteness matters. In one experiment, groups of participants saw one of five versions of a service person’s response, each just slightly increasing in concreteness (e.g., “I’ll go search for that”, “I’ll go search for that t-shirt”, and “I’ll go search for that t-shirt in grey”). As the employee’s response subtly increased in how specific and tangible the words were, so did the participant’s satisfaction with the employee.
“The fact that concrete language suggests to others that you’re listening makes sense,” says Packard. “If you’re not paying attention to someone, you can’t really reference the things they care about. By paying attention to the language their employees use, all kinds of organizations might help reduce customer anxiety and frustration, improve satisfaction, and build trust with customers in what are truly challenging times.”
Study examines whether corporate social responsibility matters in times of crisis
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Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is not effective at shielding shareholder wealth from the adverse effects of a crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting a potential disconnect between a company’s CSR orientation (what it believes) and its actual actions (what it does), according to a new study in the Journal of Corporate Finance.
Kee-Hong Bae
The research paper, which examines the relation between CSR activities and shareholder value during the COVID-19 stock market crash, was co-authored by Kee-Hong Bae, professor of finance and Bob Finlayson Chair in International Finance at York University’s Schulich School of Business; Sadok El Ghoul, from Campus Saint-Jean at the University of Alberta; Zhaoran (Jason) Gong, from Lingnan University in Hong Kong; and Omrane Guedhami, from the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina.
The researchers studied 1,750 U.S. firms and two major sources of CSR ratings, and found no evidence that CSR affected stock returns during the period immediately following the COVID-19 pandemic when the stock market crashed. In addition, the researchers found that Business Roundtable companies, an association representing CEOs from many of America’s largest corporations, did not attain better stock performance during the crisis.
“Business Roundtable companies that powerfully demonstrated a CSR commitment to stakeholders just prior to the crisis did not perform any differently during the crisis,” said Bae.
Bae also said the pandemic exposed some companies’ avowed CSR values and principles as being mostly a public relations exercise. While some companies stepped up to the plate by helping employees (e.g., increasing their hourly wage), customers (e.g., offering unlimited mobile data), and suppliers (e.g., accelerating payments), other companies with strong CSR reputations laid off a significant percentage of their workforce, jeopardizing employees’ healthcare benefits at a time when they were arguably needed the most.
The following notice was prepared by Detlev Zwick, interim dean, Schulich School of Business:
On Wednesday, Jan. 20, the Schulich School of Business suddenly and tragically lost a wonderful colleague and dedicated staff member. It is with great sadness that I inform you of the passing of our colleague and friend, Lidia Serras, assistant director of Graduate Recruitment and Admissions in the Student Services & International Relations unit.
Lidia Serras
Lidia represented Schulich with pride and professionalism at student recruitment events across Canada and around the world. In her role as assistant director, she oversaw recruitment and admissions for Schulich’s specialized master’s programs. She led a large team and inspired them to regularly exceed goals and targets while developing recruitment strategies for the launch of new programs.
A native of Portugal, Lidia held a master’s degree in international relations from the Technical University of Lisbon and a post-graduate diploma in business administration and management from Nova School of Business and Economics in Lisbon. Prior to joining Schulich as assistant director in August 2018, she had a rich and highly diverse career, living and working in three different continents at large global organizations such as Shell and KPMG, as well as international governmental organizations such as the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, where she was head of learning and development.
Known for her passion and integrity, Lidia was deeply loyal to her team members. She tackled her work with enthusiasm and tenacity and poured all of her heart into everything she undertook. Full of life, Lidia loved to travel and discover the world, and she valued spending time with her family above all else. Lidia will be greatly missed by the numerous faculty, staff, students and graduates whose lives she touched during her time at our school.
The school will host a virtual memorial service at a later date to bring together family, friends and colleagues to celebrate Lidia’s life and I will provide details once a date and time have been confirmed.
On behalf of the entire Schulich community, I extend our deepest sympathies to Lidia’s husband, Daniel, and their two children, Hanna, and Miguel, as well as her family and loved ones overseas.
In memory of Serras, the Schulich community will establish a new scholarship in her name, to be awarded annually to a full-time Schulich School of Business student, enrolled in a specialized master program, who demonstrates academic excellence and financial need. The recipient must be well-rounded and possess experience working with teams from diverse backgrounds. Applicants for the scholarship must also have experience working with international organizations. The scholarship will reflect the values most closely associated with Lidia, dedication and loyalty, as well as her rich and highly diverse career, having lived and worked in three different continents for large global corporations and government organizations.
Schulich helps to inform federal government’s international trade recovery plan
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Expertise from the Schulich School of Business will help inform the federal government’s recovery plan for Canadian exporters following the COVID-19 global pandemic.
Douglas Kennedy
Douglas Kennedy, director of Schulich’s Centre for Global Enterprise, took part in a panel of witnesses that presented key information to the government’s Standing Committee on International Trade (CIIT) in December 2020. The CIIT has commissioned a study to review the changes that will be made to the way international trade will be conducted in a post-COVID-19 world.
Kennedy is the inaugural managing director of the non-profit centre, whose mission is to assist Canadian companies in achieving their full potential through engagement with international markets. During the panel presentation, Kennedy emphasized that although all countries will be affected, the impact of COVID-19 will differ from country to country. Many East Asian countries that appear to be coping well can expect to recover and resume accelerated economic growth relatively quickly, he offered as an example.
He also noted that Canada constitutes under two per cent of the global economy, and that demographics, improving infrastructure, higher educational levels and similar factors imply many economies can be expected to grow at a faster pace than mature economies like Canada’s.
Kennedy also summarized that:
Canadian businesses wishing to reach global scale will have to engage with markets outside of North America. Of the expected largest 20 economies in 2050, Canada’s trade with 14 of them is negligible.
The pandemic will cause substantial economic disruption by accelerating trends already in evidence (e-commerce, remote working) while underlining additional risks businesses must manage (supply chain resilience, cyber vulnerabilities).
Economic transformation influenced by COVID-19 will provide opportunities for Canadian businesses such as online delivery of services such as education, healthcare, engineering, and finance, as well as in the food and beverage industry.
In an increasingly digitized economy, establishing multilateral consensus on issues like data protection and privacy, taxation and regulation of technology platforms, or common standards for technology infrastructure may hold even more value to Canadian businesses than simply reducing tariff barriers.
In terms of support, many Canadian businesses will have to transform their business models and revise their value chains. Government programs could usefully focus on helping businesses make the necessary adjustments to facilitate such transformation.
Government initiatives in support of trade should be prioritized by their ability to generate long-term returns to the Canadian economy. Programs need to be assessed and delivered based on the opportunity cost they pose for participating businesses. The less investment, time, effort, executive attention, or execution effort they require, the more enthusiastic businesses will be about participating.
Team Schulich represented the Schulich School of Business earlier this month at the 33rd annual MBA Games, hosted online by Laval University, earning the first-place title and the Queen’s Cup.
Considered the largest MBA competition in Canada, this two-day event features over 600 students from MBA programs across the country competing in Academic, Athletic and Spirit challenges for the coveted Queen’s Cup.
Team Schulich won the coveted Queen’s Cup at the MBA Games earlier this month
The theme for this year’s event was “Future of Work,” and teams were challenged to reflect this theme in their five-minute video submission. Team Schulich acknowledged how COVID-19 has affected the way we work yet united us during this challenging time.
“The shift to a virtual format for this competition created an entirely new challenge, and our Schulich students responded with their characteristic drive, creativity and strong team spirit,” shared Team Coach and Marketing Instructor Joe Fayt. “Despite the fact that we couldn’t get together in person, the team members were still highly engaged, and continually supported each other every single day.”
Under the strong leadership of Kunal Taneja (MBA ’21), the team performed consistently across all categories. Schulich finished in first place overall, ending up first in Academics and Athletics and second in Spirit. The winning team consisted of the following members:
Kunal Taneja (MBA ’21)
Asha Kissoon (MMgt ’21)
Mary Wei (MBA ’21)
Taran Sandhu (MBA ’21)
Divyalakshmi Giritharan (MMgt ’21)
Sanpreet Dhillon (MBA/JD ’24)
Ananta Vashisht (MMgt ’21)
Albina Mamonkina (MBA/JD ’23)
Azra Samji (MBA ’21)
Niketa Saini (MMgt ’21)
Juan Canales Orozco (MMgt ’21)
Abdelrahman Sahban Ali (MBA ’21)
Manuel Romano (MMgt ’21)
Annabelle Chan (MBA ’21)
Austin Ganesh (MMgt ’21)
Carlie Guida (MMgt ’21)
Deanna Galati (MBA ’22)
Michael Batista (MMgt ’21)
“On behalf of the entire Schulich community, I would like to congratulate Team Schulich and coach Joe Fayt on their outstanding results at the 2021 MBA Games,” said Interim Dean Detlev Zwick. “National and international competitions like the MBA Games truly demonstrate the skill, spirit and determination of our students.”
This marks the second time in the last four years that Schulich has won the Queen’s Cup, continuing a long tradition of excellence at this national competition – one that has seen Schulich consistently place among the top three schools in the country a remarkable 18 times over the past 19 years.
Top ranking for Schulich’s MBA program by ‘The Economist’
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The Economist magazine has ranked the MBA program at York University’s Schulich School of Business No. 1 in Canada and 21st in the world in the magazine’s annual survey of the world’s top 100 MBA programs.
In addition to finishing first among Canadian business schools, Schulich placed eighth in the world among non-U.S. schools. The following are some of the key highlights regarding Schulich in this year’s TheEconomist ranking:
Schulich ranked third in the world in the category of Recruiter Diversity – the number of industries represented by recruiters who hire Schulich graduates.
Schulich ranked third in the world in the category of Potential to Network, which takes into account the size of a school’s alumni network.
Schulich ranked eighth in the world in the category of Salary Increase – a measurement that captures the percentage by which salaries increased pre-MBA to post-MBA.
Schulich ranked 13th in the world in the category of Faculty Quality.
The Economist survey is the only major global ranking that rates business schools on criteria deemed most important to MBA students and alumni – everything from diversity of career opportunities to earning potential and networking opportunities.
“We’re pleased that The Economist has once again ranked Schulich’s MBA program No. 1 in Canada,” said Schulich Dean Detlev Zwick. “We’re also pleased that Schulich was ranked among the top schools in the world in several categories that students identify as being among the most important, including diversity of recruiters, networking potential, and salary increase following graduation.”
Bootcamp, venture competition ignites student entrepreneurs in Canada, India
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York University’s Schulich School of Business and Lassonde School of Engineering partnered with Startup India to kick off TOGETHER 2021, a seven-day virtual Entrepreneurship Bootcamp and Venture Competition in early January.
Backed by global organizations, leading entrepreneurs and top venture capitalists, 250 student entrepreneurs from Canada and India formed teams and were challenged to come up with potential solutions in line with this year’s values of self-reliability, sustainability and social purpose.
Student entrepreneurs from Canada and India participated in the week-long TOGETHER 2021 virtual bootcamp
Throughout the week, the 50 teams had the opportunity to consult with various mentors from Canada and India to refine their ideas before the judging round. Through three judging rounds, leading venture capitalists and investors chose the top three venture ideas.
“Congratulations to all of the students who have shown the courage and creativity to build something new and amazing and to bring their startup to life,” said Chris Carder, executive director of the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Schulich. “In a year where we were faced with many challenges and hardships around the world, this global project is testament to how we can still work closely together as we continue into 2021.”
Congratulations went to iBeta (first place), Wricks (second place) and GenFlow AI (third place) for winning the inaugural competition. The winning teams were rewarded with powerful startup tools, global networks and monetary support to realize their entrepreneurial dreams.
“You should be proud of the work you did, the teamwork you learned and the experience of being in this competition,” Toronto Mayor John Tory told the students at the Championship Finals. “Pandemic or not, we can’t lose sight of encouraging entrepreneurs and having competitions like this. The City of Toronto appreciates the spirit of TOGETHER 2021 and the incredible work the Schulich School of Business at York University and Startup India put into creating this so quickly.”
The event was held in partnership with the City of Toronto and supported by ICICI Bank Canada, Leverage Edu, Apollo Hospitals, the Indo Canada Chamber of Commerce, Toronto Global, TiE Toronto, INDOCHINO, YSpace, Tangentia Ventures, Anand & Anand, Auro Pharmaceuticals and York University.
