The Relationship Between Intellectual Capital Performance and Ownership Gender Diversity in Small-Sized Italian Companies

In recent years, research has been directed toward investigating the determinants of IC performance. While several studies have shown that gender affects company performance and some of its dimensions, whether and how gender impacts on IC performance is still an area open to research. Thus, the aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between ownership gender diversity and IC performance with specific reference to small-sized Italian companies. The investigation is carried out through cross-sectional OLS analysis. The IC performance, the dependent variable, is measured through VAIC™ and each of its three components, while the ownership gender diversity, the independent variable, is measured through a gender diversity index, the Shannon’s index. A set of control variables is included to control for the influence of the factors that previous studies have found to affect the magnitude of VAIC™ and its three components. The results of the OLS analysis show that ownership gender diversity has a negative impact on IC performance: i.e., the higher the diversity, the lower the performance. This seems to support the validity of the similarity attraction paradigm within the IC field.