The Impact Of Board Diversity On The Degree Of Internationalization Of Enterprises

As the global economic situation becomes increasingly complex and severe,it is increasingly important to increase the level of openness to the outside world.Opening up to the outside world not only helps to expand the scope of international cooperation in China’s economy,but also drives the healthy development and progress of China’s economy.While Chinese enterprises are accelerating their pace of "going out",they are also facing many problems.Given the growing downward pressure on the global economy and increasing trade frictions,it is increasingly important to enhance the internationalization of enterprises.The degree of internationalization of a company can reflect the effectiveness of its internationalization strategy.The way in which a company makes decisions and the effectiveness and scientific nature of these decisions can have a significant impact on the company’s internationalization strategy.Therefore,decision-making by the company’s management team is a key factor in its internationalization strategy.In a company’s management team,the board of directors is an important component.As the decision-making body of the company,the board of directors can have an impact on the company’s decisions and oversee other senior management.In the process of making internationalization strategy decisions,board members with different characteristics and backgrounds will make different proposals based on their own understanding and knowledge base,thereby improving the scientific nature of the company’s internationalization decisions.In addition,a diverse board can provide the company with a wealth of external resources and information,helping the company to seize international market opportunities and enhance its global competitiveness.Therefore,exploring the relationship between board diversity and the degree of internationalization of a company is of utmost importance.In order to deeply study the impact path of board diversity on the internationalization level of enterprises,this paper takes the theory of upper echelons,resource dependence theory,group decision theory,and agency theory as the theoretical basis,and comprehensively constructs the index of board diversity from five dimensions of board member age,gender,professional background,educational background,and tenure diversity.The related data of A-share listed companies with overseas sales revenue from 2010 to 2021 was collected and sorted.Through empirical methods,the impact of board diversity on the internationalization level of enterprises was explored.At the same time,this paper further studies whether the ownership nature of enterprises will affect the relationship between board diversity and the internationalization level of enterprises.Endogeneity is an inherent problem in micro-metric quantification.To address endogeneity problems caused by omitted variables,reverse causality,and selective bias,this paper uses the two-stage instrument variable method(IV＿2SLS),propensity score matching method(PSM),and fixed effect model for testing and uses the substitution variable method for robustness testing.The results verify the robustness of the regression in this paper.The research finds that board diversity has a significant promoting effect on the internationalization level of enterprises.And the diversity of board member age,gender,professional background,educational background,and tenure diversity will have a significant impact on the internationalization degree of enterprises.The research results further indicate that the national ownership nature of enterprises will weaken the impact of board diversity on the internationalization degree of enterprises.The study in this paper is innovative and has practical significance.On one hand,previous literature on board diversity mainly focuses on its impact on corporate innovation,risk,and performance,and has not explored the relationship between board diversity and the degree of internationalization of the enterprise.This paper improves and supplements existing research.On the other hand,in researching the impact of board diversity on the degree of internationalization of the enterprise,the paper introduces a comprehensive measurement of board diversity,providing a new research perspective for related fields.The research conclusions of this paper can help Chinese enterprises to understand the importance of optimizing the composition of the board of directors and forming a reasonable internal governance structure.It provides policy recommendations for China to seize historical opportunities and improve its level of openness to the outside world.