25 research outputs found
Female Directors and Innovation in Public Hospitals
The paper aims to examine the influence of gender diversity among hospital directors on the adoption
of innovation. To this aim, it empirically analyses a sample of 108 Italian public hospitals, including
general, teaching and research hospitals, for the 2015-2016 time-frame. Findings from our OLS regression analysis show that female directors enable hospitals to successfully face the innovation challenge.
In particular, female directors bring specific skills to executives and enhance their knowledge base. In
addition, the results of our analysis suggest that work-abroad experience promote the implementation
of innovative solutions as it provides women directors with a global view and open-mindedness that
enrich their intercultural skills, and therefore their attitude towards innovation.
The results contribute to the existing empirical research on women in governance by providing insights
into the healthcare sector that is still under-explored. Moreover, the paper suggests that policy makers
should pay attention to combine a stronger participation of female in hospital leadership, and call for
proper normative actions able to improve the background requirements for the recruitment of directors