A better start: board diversity matters in assessing stock price crash risk

Purpose The determinants that contribute to reducing stock price crash risk have garnered attention from scholars and practitioners. However, our understanding of the relationship between board diversity and stock crash risk, as well as the contextual factors that influence this relationship, remains limited. To address this gap, this study aims to investigate how different attributes of board diversity affect stock price crash risk, particularly under conditions of higher performance hazard and ownership concentration. Design/methodology/approach Using a two-stage least squares fixed-effects estimator, the authors analyze a panel data set of 1,792 firm-year observations across 282 firms listed on the KOSPI200 from 2010 to 2019. Findings Relation-oriented diversity reduces future stock price crash risk, particularly when firms experience performance shortfalls and have concentrated ownership structures, but task-oriented diversity has no significant effects. The results imply that only relation-oriented diversity strengthens governance mechanisms by curtailing managerial bad news withholding behaviors, and the role of relation-oriented diversity in reducing stock crash risk becomes more crucial when firms have higher performance hazard and concentrated ownership. Originality/value This study makes crucial contributions as follows: the authors contribute to the stock crash risk literature by shifting the focus from how to when board diversity matters in assessing stock crash risk; the authors extend the board diversity research and enhance scholarly understanding of the effects of board diversity on corporate governance by highlighting that not all aspects of board diversity improve firm governance mechanisms; and the authors widen the lens from a single attribute to multiple attributes of diversity to reveal the effects of diversity on boards in assessing future crash risk.