Seminar (Dept. of General Management)

Title: Bridging Status Gaps: Using Corporate Foundations to Mitigate Female CEO Liabilities

Speaker: Weiting Zheng (The University of New South Wales)

Time: 14:30 (Tuesday), December 10th, 2024

Venue: Room 1008, Mingde Business Building

Language: Chinese/ English

ABSTRACT:

Despite progress in appointing women to top leadership positions, firms may still face negative social evaluations due to persistent gender biases. Drawing on the stakeholder perspective of upper echelons, we propose that firms mitigate these risks by adopting strategies that enhance both the CEO’s social prominence and stakeholders' sense of direct access to the CEO. Specifically, we argue that appointing a female CEO motivates firms to establish corporate foundations as a means of enhancing the CEO’s social prominence and enabling stakeholders to form judgments based on firsthand interactions rather than relying on gender stereotypes. Supporting our theoretical arguments, this effect diminishes when female CEOs possess higher achieved status—such as political ties or professional recognition—which already mitigate status-based liabilities. We test these arguments with data on corporate foundations among publicly listed firms in China between 1999 and 2022. Our findings advance the literature on stakeholder view of upper echelons and social evaluations by identifying corporate foundations as an overlooked strategic mechanism for managing gender-based status liabilities.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY:

Weiting Zheng is Associae Professor at the School of Management and Governance, UNSW Business School. In her research, she investigates corporate non-market strategy, trying to understand organizations' actions in managing their socio-political environments. Her current research projects focus on topics related to corporate political strategy, the role of the state in influencing corporate behavior, and managing diverse stakeholder relationships.

Weiting has published in leading academic journals such as Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of World Business, and Research Policy. She is a Dean's Research Fellow, and has won UNSW Business School Research Excellence Commendation in 2019. Weiting is Associate Editor at the Australian Journal of Management, Senior Editor at Management and Organization Review, and serves on the editorial board of leading management journals including Strategic Management Journal and Journal of Management. She has successfully obtained competitive research grants in different countries. Her research has been cited by the managerial and popular press, including Harvard Business Review, South China Morning Post, INSEAD Knowledge, and BusinessThink.