Here's a sign that a board of directors resembling a Guys Night Out at the Tilted Kilt could be a problem:
New research shows that firms with at least one woman director are significantly less likely to restate quarterly or annual earnings than are companies with an all-male slate of directors—40% less likely, researchers say.
Theories behind this? Well, besides the constant risk of important discussions veering off into fantasy football anecdotes during latter third of the calendar year, a sausage fest is too prone to validating the shit out of each other:
One theory as to why the mere presence of a single woman could lead to fewer accounting restatements, according to co-author Susan Parker, accounting professor and associate dean at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business, is that heterogeneous groups are less susceptible to groupthink and allows members to raise objections and ask tough questions.
There's also the possibility that companies that avoid the Wonder Bread Bros of Directors may already "predisposed to good governance" but Parker stops just short of pulling the Mars/Venus card:
Parker says she’d hesitate to say that the different restatement results are based on women being “different” from men, though she notes that other research has found women may have a greater tendency to challenge the status quo.
In other words, it's not because women are different, it's because they have more balls. Or something.
Board Math: One Woman Equals Fewer Accounting Errors [At Work/WSJ]
