Global trends in board diversity research: a bibliometric view

Abstract

Purpose: This study aims to identify the main research development on board diversity and offers a quantitative synopsis of key themes and contributors, knowledge gaps and provides directions for further work. Design/methodology/approach: Using a bibliometric analysis, the authors assess the patterns in global board diversity research based on co-occurrences of researchers’ keywords and publication outputs of 991 articles from the Scopus database. Also, the co-citation network analysis was performed to assess the intellectual structure of board diversity research. Findings: According to the keyword analysis, the authors found that researchers focus on the gender diversity of the boardroom while ignoring the cognitive diversity and other aspects of demographic diversity such as educational, ethnic, age, nationality, experience, background and tenure, pointing to the need for further work to consider other diversity attributes and the interaction between them. Additionally, board diversity research related to (but not limited to) payout policy, cash holding, initial public offerings, small–medium enterprises and financial institutions is limited. Originality/value: This study provides a comprehensive evaluation of the development of board diversity research (using a large archival database) and identifies the common construct as well as the potential opportunities for future research directions.