New Venture Milestones and the First Female Board Member

Alicia  DeSantola; Lakshmi  Ramarajan; Julie  Battilana

Article | Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings | 2017

New Venture Milestones and the First Female Board Member

by Alicia DeSantola, Lakshmi Ramarajan and Julie Battilana

Abstract

We explore the antecedents of the addition of the first woman to the boards of directors of entrepreneurial ventures. Building on research on resource dependency, we propose that new ventures are most likely to add the first woman to their boards at three developmental moments– board founding, fundraising, and the IPO– as a consequence of shifting alignments of resource control. A critical contingency to changes at the time of these milestones is the presence of resource holders who value the inclusion of women. We draw on an extensive handcrafted dataset on the boards of 2,425 U.S.-based new ventures to test these predictions. Our findings reveal that the first woman is likely to be added at the time of board formation if the founder-CEO is a woman and at the time of fundraising if the venture capital investment firm has a senior female partner. They also show that ventures are likely to add a woman to their board at the time of the IPO if they have not yet done so, but are unlikely to add a second. Our findings have implications for research on gender and entrepreneurship, women on boards, and the sociology of markets.

Keywords: boards of directors; entrepreneurship; diversity; Governing and Advisory Boards; Entrepreneurship; Gender; Diversity; Technology Industry; United States;

Format: Electronic

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Citation:

DeSantola, Alicia, Lakshmi Ramarajan, and Julie Battilana. "New Venture Milestones and the First Female Board Member." Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings (2017).

Vox Capital was the first certified impact investing fund in Brazil. Founded in 2009, it provides early-stage capital for companies offering innovative and scalable solutions to enhance the lives of low-income Brazilians, while aiming to simultaneously generate attractive market-rate financial returns for investors. This case examines the evolution of Vox Capital, across understanding the landscape, launching, raising funds, selecting investees, structuring deals, building investee capacities, tracking performance, developing internal systems, and advancing the field of impact investing.

In 2019, Nadine Vogel, founder and CEO of Springboard Consulting, a firm that worked with Fortune 500 companies on issues related to disability and their workforce, faced the decision of the best path forward to grow her small company. Should she built more and better expertise to expand the topics she worked on with her current clientele? Or should she explore the possibility of moving into the new market of smaller businesses?

Case | HBS Case Collection | February 2020

Leading Change in Talent at L'Oréal

Lakshmi Ramarajan, Vincent Marie Dessain and Emer Moloney

Jean-Claude Le Grand had dedicated almost his entire career to following talent at L'Oréal. He strongly believed that L'Oréal's workforce needed to be diverse in order to ensure creativity and innovation. In early 2018—as he was about to take up the position of EVP for Human Relations and a place on the Executive Committee—L'Oréal still struggled to diversify its senior leadership team, which was often male, French, elite-educated and made up of executives who had spent their entire careers at the company. At the same time, in an increasingly competitive market for talent, and given digitalization and new ways of working Le Grand was preoccupied that L'Oréal would no longer be able to attract vibrant young talent.

Keywords: Advertising; Business Headquarters; Business Divisions; Business Organization; Change; Change Management; Transformation; Competency and Skills; Experience and Expertise; Talent and Talent Management; Demographics; Diversity; Gender; Nationality; Multinational Firms and Management; Human Resources; Employees; Recruitment; Retention; Selection and Staffing; Innovation and Management; Jobs and Positions; Employment; Human Capital; Leadership; Leadership Development; Leadership Style; Leading Change; Management Practices and Processes; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Product Marketing; Organizations; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Structure; Personal Development and Career; Planning; Strategic Planning; Problems and Challenges; Networks; Social Psychology; Attitudes; Power and Influence; Social and Collaborative Networks; Business Strategy; Advertising Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Consumer Products Industry; France; Paris;

Citation:

Ramarajan, Lakshmi, Vincent Marie Dessain, and Emer Moloney. "Leading Change in Talent at L'Oréal." Harvard Business School Case 420-106, February 2020. View Details

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