女性董事与公司诉讼风险——基于中国上市公司的实证分析

Female Directors and Corporate Litigation Risk——An Empirical Study Based on Chinese Listed Companies

本文从女性管理者特征的角度分析了女性董事对公司诉讼风险的影响，以2010-2015年中国非金融类上市公司为研究样本。本文实证分析结果表明：①女性董事比例越大，涉诉金额与涉诉次数越低，即女性董事降低了公司涉诉的频度；②在女性董事人数超过关键多数（三人或以上）的样本中，女性董事对公司诉讼风险的负向影响更显著，这表明关键多数理论在女性董事与公司诉讼风险的关系中成立；③在男性主导行业，女性董事降低公司诉讼风险的作用显著存在，而在女性主导行业，女性董事与公司诉讼风险的关系变得不显著，这说明性别多元化对于降低诉讼风险有积极意义。本文为女性董事在公司治理中的作用提供了进一步的经验证据，并讨论了这一研究结果的意义与启示。

This paper investigates the effect of female directors on firm litigation risk. Based on prior research on female psychological characteristics of female executives and corporate governance,we propose that female executives help reduce firm litigation risk. Results from the data of listed companies in China from 2010 to 2015 show that:①the greater the proportion of female directors,the lower the amount of litigation and the number of cases involved in the company,which indicates that female directorssignificantly reduce the severity and frequency of firm litigation;②in the condition of female directors exceeding the critical majority( three or more),the negative influence of female directors on the firm litigation risk is significantly stronger,which indicates that the critical mass theory holds in the relationship between the female directors and firm litigation risk in China;③the role of female directors in reducing firm litigation risk in the male-dominated industry is significant while the relationship between female directors and firm litigation risk becomes insignificant in female-dominated industries,which suggests that one of the mechanisms by which female directors reduce firm litigation risk may be to provide heterogeneous information for board management decisions. This paper provides further empirical evidence for the role of female directors in corporate governance,and discusses the implications of the research results.