Gender diversity and online intellectual capital disclosure: Evidence from Italian-listed firms

The present research investigates the impact that certain gender diversity attributes exert on online intellectual capital (IC) disclosure in the context of Italian-listed firms where regulations promoted gender balance in the governing bodies. The websites of a sample of 123 Italian listed companies are content-analyzed to retrieve the level of voluntary IC disclosure (ICD). Drawing on Agency and Resource Dependence theory perspectives, an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression model, is estimated to test the association between online ICD and different gender diversity measures, specifically: the proportion of women on boards and the presence of female Chairpersons and female CEOs. The content analysis results show that listed companies in Italy make extensive disclosure of IC on their websites. The results based on the regression analysis confirm that women's presence on boards is conducive to higher voluntary ICD. The analysis also demonstrates that Italian-listed firms tend to convey more voluntary information on IC resources when a woman is appointed as a CEO. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that provides a snapshot of the potential association between gender diversity-in terms of both the proportion of women on the boards and the presence of women in top executive positions-and the level of web-based ICD.