Firm size and board diversity Martin Arnegger • Christian Hofmann • Kerstin Pull • Karin Vetter Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013 Abstract This study seeks to understand the relation between firm size and supervisory board composition. Specifically, we ask if and how firm size influences occupational and international background diversity in supervisory boards. Relying on resource dependence theory and theories of organizational behavior, we hypothesize that board diversity with respect to directors’ occupational background will increase with firm size, while the relation between firm size and board diversity with respect to directors’ international background will be concave. Using archival data for supervisory board members of 151 German firms listed in the German stock exchange indices DAX, MDAX, SDAX and TecDAX for the business year 2005, we find empirical support for our hypotheses: Both, occupational and international background diversity increase with increasing firm size, but international back- ground diversity does so at decreasing rates. Keywords Corporate governance  Board composition  Occupational background diversity  International background diversity JEL Classification M2  M12  M51 M. Arnegger Department of Managerial Accounting, University of Mannheim, 68131 Mannheim, Germany e-mail: martin.arnegger@gmx.de C. Hofmann (&) Chair for Managerial Accounting, LMU Munich, 80539 Munich, Germany e-mail: hofmann@bwl.lmu.de K. Pull  K. Vetter Department of Human Resource Management and Organization, University of Tu ¨bingen, 72074 Tu ¨bingen, Germany e-mail: kerstin.pull@uni-tuebingen.de K. Vetter e-mail: karinvetter@gmx.net 123 J Manag Gov DOI 10.1007/s10997-013-9273-6