UNCORRECTED PROOF UNCORRECTED PROOF 2 Newly appointed directors in the boardroom: 3 How do women and men differ? 4 Val Singh a,1 , Siri Terjesen b, * ,à , Susan Vinnicombe c,1 5 a Reader in Organizational Behaviour, Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University, 6 Bedford MK43 0AL, United Kingdom 7 b Post Doctoral Research Fellow, Brisbane Graduate School of Business, Queensland University of Technology, 8 GOP Box 2434, Brisbane Qld 4001, Australia 9 c Professor of Organizational Behaviour and Diversity Management, Cranfield School of Management, 10 Cranfield University, Bedford MK43 0AL, United Kingdom KEYWORDS Careers; Corporate boards; Corporate governance; Diversity; Female directors; FTSE 100; Gender; Glass ceiling; Human capital; Top management teams Summary This paper investigates the human capital profile of new appointees to corpo- rate boards, exploring gender differences in education, profile and career experiences. Findings from a study of UK boards reveal that women are significantly more likely to bring international diversity to their boards and to possess an MBA degree. New male directors are significantly more likely to have corporate board experience, including CEO/COO roles, while new female appointees are significantly more likely to have experience as directors on boards of smaller firms. Our evidence contradicts the view reported by some chairmen that women lack adequate human capital for boardroom positions. ª 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 11 12 Introduction 13 Recent major corporate scandals such as Enron have turned 14 public attention to the composition of corporate boards of 15 directors who are responsible for firm governance. One 16 key issue in corporate governance is the gender composition 17 of corporate boards, highlighting the scant representation 18 of women, despite women making up half of the potential 19 employee, customer and other stakeholder bases (Catalyst, 20 2004; Daily, Certo & Dalton, 1999; Authors, 2007). New gov- 21 ernance guidelines following the Cadbury Report (Cadbury, 22 1999) and the Higgs Review (Higgs, 2003) in the UK called 0263-2373/$ - see front matter ª 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.emj.2007.10.002 * Corresponding author. Present address: Visiting Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute of Economics; Entrepreneurship, Growth & Public Policy, Kahlaische Straße 10, D-07745 Jena, Germany. Tel.: +61 7 3864 1105; fax: +61 7 3864 1299. E-mail addresses: v.singh@cranfield.ac.uk (V. Singh), s.terjesen@qut.edu.au (S. Terjesen), s.m.vinnicombe@cranfield.ac.uk (S. Vinnicombe). 1 Tel.: +44 0 1234 751122; fax: +44 0 1234 751806. à Dual appointment European Management Journal (2007) xxx, xxx– xxx journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/emj Please cite this article in press as: Singh, V. et al., Newly appointed directors in the boardroom:, European Management Jour- nal (2007), doi:10.1016/j.emj.2007.10.002 EMJ 1227 No. of Pages 11, Model 6+ 19 November 2007 Disk Used ARTICLE IN PRESS