“It Takes Humility to Enhance Diversity: CEO Humility and Female Representation in Top Management Teams” 

Jia Jasmine Hu

University of Ohio

Abstract: Building on role congruity theory and research on humility and upper echelons, we propose that CEOs who display more humility are more likely to appreciate female managers’ contributions and appoint more women to TMTs. Using a histometric approach, we investigated 130 CEOs (997 firm-years) serving in 126 major global companies in 30 different countries and found that CEOs with more humility are associated with higher female representation in TMTs. Furthermore, the influence of CEO humility on women’s representation in TMTs was stronger when 1) the CEO is a female, 2) the CEO has more power, and 3) the societal culture shows lower masculinity or power distance values. A supplementary experiment with 390 full-time entrepreneurs further provides evidence in support of our theoretical mechanisms.