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Gender and Managerial Job Mobility: Career Prospects for Executives Displaced by Acquisitions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2023

Xiaohu Guo ,
Vishal K. Gupta ,
Sandra Mortal Open the ORCID record for Sandra Mortal [Opens in a new window]  and
Vikram Nanda
Xiaohu Guo
Affiliation:
College of Charleston School of Business [email protected]
Vishal K. Gupta
Affiliation:
University of Alabama Culverhouse College of Business [email protected]
Sandra Mortal*
Affiliation:
University of Alabama Culverhouse College of Business
Vikram Nanda
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Dallas Naveen Jindal School of Management [email protected]
*
[email protected] (corresponding author)
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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We investigate how men and women fare in the managerial labor market in the plausibly exogenous circumstance of their firms being acquired when most target-firm managers (about 90%) are displaced. These career disruptions result in a larger drop in rank and compensation for female managers, despite similar job search attributes. Gender differences are mitigated when hiring firms have more women in upper-echelon positions. Rich managerial experience and external board service also reduce gender-related differences. Overall, results point to a (implicit) “gender penalty” in terms of managerial job mobility, but also indicate contexts in which penalty is alleviated, and even reversed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis , First View , pp. 1 - 41
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that no alterations are made and the original article is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained prior to any commercial use and/or adaptation of the article.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Michael G. Foster School of Business, University of Washington

Footnotes

We thank two anonymous referees, Anup Agrawal, Vineet Bhagwat, Mara Faccio (the editor), David King, Lei Kong, Marc Lipson, John List, Johan Maharjan, David Matsa, Shawn Mobbs, Josh Pierce, and Emilia Vähäma, seminar participants at the 2020 Labor and Finance Online Seminar and Nova School of Business and Economics, participants at The Dawgs Virtual Workshop, and John List’s Team meeting, and conference participants at the 2020 Boca Corporate Finance and Governance Conference, 2020 Financial Management Association Doctoral Consortium, 2021 Northern Finance Association conference, and 2020 Southern Finance Association conference for valuable comments.

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