Does the Cultural Dimension Influence the Relationship between Firm Value and Board Gender Diversity in Saudi Arabia, Mediated by ESG Scoring?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The scarcity of female directors on Saudi boards is linked to cultural and social barriers deeply rooted in traditional masculine norms. Our study investigates the mediating role of ESG scores in the relationship between board gender diversity and firm value within the Saudi context. The Structural Equation Model (SEM) was utilized based on a sample of 54 Saudi-listed financial companies on (Tadawul) during 2021–2022. The study unveiled a negative correlation between female director presence and Saudi firm value. This association is attributed to the prevailing male-dominated Saudi societal norms, where boards with more female members may hesitate to prioritize performance-driven actions due to concerns about their perceived legitimacy within traditional gender roles. Conversely, a positive correlation was observed between female director presence and ESG scores, aligning with existing research highlighting the role of board gender diversity in improving sustainability performance. The sustainability framework prevails over the influence of gender diversity, fully integrating it within the broader context of sustainability to enhance the value of Saudi companies. Our results are consistent when considering alternative measures of firm value. Our findings offer valuable insights for investors assessing board gender diversity’s impact on company value and emphasize the role of gender diversity in enhancing sustainability. They suggest that greater female representation on boards is vital for ESG score improvement, promoting sustainable initiatives and overall firm value. This calls for policymakers to promote sustainability disclosures and establish guidelines for increased female board participation, considering the absence of mandatory quotas.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".