Using a novel database of firm patents and board characteristics across 45 countries, we examine both within- and cross-country determinants of board gender diversity and its relation to corporate innovation. Boards are more likely to include women in countries with narrower gender gaps, higher female labor market participation, and less masculine cultures. Firms with gender diverse boards have more patents and novel patents, and a higher innovative efficiency. Further analyses suggest that gender diverse boards are associated with more failure-tolerant and long-term chief executive officer (CEO) incentives, more innovative corporate cultures, and more diverse inventors, characteristics that are conducive to an improved innovative performance.

We investigate the role of national culture in corporate risk-taking. We postulate that culture influences corporate risk-taking both through its effect on managerial decision-making and through its effect on a country's formal institutions. Further, we postulate that the influence of culture is conditioned on the extent of managerial discretion as measured by earnings discretion and firm size. Using firm-level data from 35 countries and employing a hierarchical linear modeling approach to isolate the effects of firm-level and country-level variables, we show that individualism has a positive and significant association, whereas uncertainty avoidance and harmony have negative and significant associations, with corporate risk-taking. Greater earnings discretion strengthens and larger firm size weakens the association of culture with corporate risk-taking. We conclude that even in a highly globalized world with sophisticated managers, culture matters.

We examine why environmental and social (E/S) performance vary across countries and firms, and evaluate the value implications. Using a sample of 33,021 firm-year observations representing 4587 firms from 43 countries over the 2003–2015 period and applying hierarchical linear modeling, we find that individualism is positively associated with firm-level E/S performance. We show that two country-level channels—freedom of the press and protection of equal rights—and three firm-level channels—managerial discretion, board diversity, and corporate transparency—link individualism to E/S performance. We find a positive association between firm-level E/S performance and firm value, with three firm-level channels—cash flows, cash flow variability, and cost of equity—linking E/S performance to firm value. This positive association is stronger in more individualistic countries. Finally, we find that internationalization weakens the role of national culture; however, it accentuates the positive association between firm-level E/S performance and firm value.