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Board Diversity and Inclusivity

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management

  • 19 Accesses

Synonyms

Board of Directors, BOD; Diversity; Equality; Gender discrimination; Inclusivity; Race discrimination

Definition

The Board of Directors (BODs) is an internal governance mechanism. The BODs are responsible for safeguarding shareholders and providing the framework which ensures alignment of management interest and those of stakeholder groups (OECD 2004; FRC 2018). As a result of the significant role played by BODs, board diversity and inclusivity are key governance issue in recent times.

Diversity in the boardroom requires an inclusion of different types of people within the organization. Inclusivity on the other hand has a much wider implication, in that, it involves including different types of people within the organization and working effectively to treat them all in an equal and fair manner (Lincoln and Adedoyin 2012a, b).

It is not enough to just have a diverse board. From a legal standpoint, steps must be taken to ensure inclusivity (Equalities Act, 2010) within...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Law School, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

    Adebimpe Lincoln

Authors
  1. Adebimpe Lincoln
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. London Metropolitan University, Guildhall Faculty of Business and Law London Metropolitan University, London, UK

    Samuel Idowu

  2. Cologne Business School, Ingolstadt, Germany

    René Schmidpeter

  3. College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, USA

    Nicholas Capaldi

  4. International Training Centre of the IL, International Labor Organization, Turin, Italy

    Liangrong Zu

  5. Department of Economics, Society and Politics, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy

    Mara Del Baldo

  6. Instituto Politécnico da Guarda, Guarda, Portugal

    Rute Abreu

Section Editor information

  1. Unitelma Sapienza University, Rome, Italy

    Carmela Gulluscio

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Lincoln, A. (2022). Board Diversity and Inclusivity. In: Idowu, S., Schmidpeter, R., Capaldi, N., Zu, L., Del Baldo, M., Abreu, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_25-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_25-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02006-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02006-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Business and ManagementReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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