Purpose – Do women contribute to performance of companies on which they serve as board of directors? Many prior studies examine this issue, but no consensus is reached on the benefits of women taking on leadership positions. The present study considers this thorny issue from a slightly different perspective. Does the association between gender diversity and business performance vary across sectors and economic cycles?

Design/methodology/approach – The sample for this study was derived from the firms included in the S&P Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) 300 Index, and the study period of 2004–2016 allowed authors to consider the effects of different sectors as well as different economic cycles on the relationship between gender diversity of boards and business performance. The authors consider the Australian context, which is somewhat unique from the other Western countries, as quotas on boards of directors are not made mandatory and the corporate governance practices are principle-based rather than rule-based.

Findings – Employing panel data models, at the aggregate level, the authors find no evidence of board gender diversity impacting business performance. Consideration of sectoral differences and economic cycles in the empirical analyses yielded additional insights. In particular, gender diversity has a beneficial association with performance for businesses in the services and financial sectors after the changes to corporate governance guidelines relating to diversity in 2010. These economic benefits, however, are not evidenced in the resources sector.

Research limitations/implications – These findings offer support for critical mass and resource dependence theories.

Practical implications – The findings of this study have implications for inclusion and diversity policies of businesses and the society. Specifically, the findings offer support for gender diversity of corporate boards of directors.

Originality/value – This study highlights that women bring their unique skills and experiences to create economic value in sectors where they traditionally have more experience and opportunities.

While a voluminous empirical literature has investigated university efficiency, much less attention has focused on the impact of administrative intensity on university performance. In this article, we seek to contribute to the empirical literature by examining the relationship between operational efficiency and administrative intensity in the Australian higher education sector over the period 2009/10–2018/19 using a second stage boots trapping Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) fractional regression model. We find that administrative intensity positively affects the performance of universities for both the standard and bias-corrected efficiency models. Moreover, administrative intensity exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with university efficiency. We also find that administrative intensity has a differential impact on the efficiency of the different types of university. Various public policy implications are considered.

The conflicts encountered by the owner-managers in family-owned firms in Malaysia are explored in this chapter. Drawing upon the theoretical lens from agency, stewardship, resource-based and socioemotional wealth theories the lived experiences of conflicts on the basis of type, nature and extent by the owner-managers of family-owned firms are investigated deeply through in-depth interviews. Macro and micro thematic categories of relative importance are elicited by employing qualitative data analysis. Results obtained indicate that owner-managers in family-owned firms experience task, process, internal and/or external-oriented conflicts alongside affective, conative and/or cognitive nature of conflicts to a lesser or greater extent on the basis of gender and ethnicity leading conflict triads. The study provides important implications for theory, practice and family business environment.