'To Board or Not to Board? Exploring Women Executive Directors' Motivation for Pursuing Non-Executive Board Directorships' Leadership, Organisations, Behaviour and Reputation Research Seminar

Dr Grosvold's research sits at the intersection of corporate governance, business and human rights. She is the Deputy Director for the Centre for Business Organisations and Society (CBOS) at the University of Bath, the largest and oldest research centre in the School of Management.

Until April of this year, Dr Grosvold was the President of the International Association of Business and Society (IABS). She is Section Editor at Journal of Business Ethics and serves on the Editorial Board of Corporate Governance: an International Review. Her research has been published in Academy of Management Learning and Education, Corporate Governance: an International Review, Business and Society, the International Journal of Operation and Production Management, the Journal of Supply Chain Management and Accounting Forum.

The topic of this presentation is 'To Board or Not to Board? Exploring Women Executive Directors' Motivation for Pursuing Non-Executive Board Directorships'. This seminar will explore whether women want to serve as non-executive directors, addressing the implied assumption in research on women and corporate boards that effectively all professional women aspire to reach this level.

The adoption of board gender quotas across much of the western world has reinforced the sense that once the path has been paved for qualified women to join the board, they would come. However, the reality is different, with executive search professionals reporting greater ambivalence amongst female executive directors to explore their first board role and that motivations and aspirations around pursuing non-executive director roles differ between men and women.

The study features interviews of 40 serving executive directors or equivalents (30 of which were women and 10 of which were men), who currently do not serve as non-executive directors but are qualified to do so. The presentation will outline the initial findings of the investigation.

The seminar is for an internal audience and will be held on 4 December 2025, 1:00pm, in room LG01 of the Henley Business School building, Whiteknights campus. For those unable to attend in person there is also the option to dial in remotely via Microsoft Teams. If you are interested in joining, please contact Alex Baker on a.j.baker@henley.ac.uk

Members of LOBR faculty may also request to book a one to one meeting with Dr Grosvold. Each appointment will last 30 minutes, between 11:00am to 12:30pm. Slots are limited and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. To arrange an appointment, please contact Alex Baker on a.j.baker@henley.ac.uk

LOBR research seminars are co-ordinated by Professor Bernd Vogel and Dr Anastasiya Saraeva.