1.6 Methodology

As was discussed in Section 1.1, women’s underrepresentation at the corporate top can be considered a problem both from a social sciences’ perspective and from a legal perspective. The barriers hindering women’s access to the corporate top are discussed in academic studies conducted by scholars in several social science disciplines. The interventions to achieve gender equality aim to provide solutions to overcome such barriers. Solutions are developed by scholars and practitioners in the legal discipline in the form of governmental interventions, e.g., quota legislation, and are developed in the organizational studies discipline in the form of organizational interventions. Both types of interventions are aimed at bringing about changes in individual behavior within companies and in corporate practices, either by changing the law applicable to companies (e.g., corporate law and corporate governance codes) or by changing the behavior of companies. The first type, governmental interventions, requires doctrinal research involving an examination of the law and legislative documents. The second type, organizational interventions, requires an examination of the literature on interventions but also requires empirical research in order to investigate such interventions in depth and in a real-world context. Consequently, the problem of women’s underrepresentation at the corporate top can be examined from a social science perspective and from a legal perspective. Therefore, this PhD research was conducted using a multi-disciplinary approach, combining methods of legal research with empirical methods used in social sciences. A multi-disciplinary approach was adopted because each of the disciplines provides only a partial answer to the main research question. The research question cannot be answered by means of legal research or social sciences research alone. The research question into how gender equality can be achieved at the corporate top can be approached from a legal perspective in order to investigate whether gender equality can be achieved by means of (effective) legislation. However, the problem statement has shown that gender equality at the corporate top cannot be achieved by legal means only. As noted, quota legislation alone, for instance, does not structurally change corporate behavior as it is only directed at changing the number of women on corporate boards. If gender equality at the corporate top is to be achieved it is, therefore, also necessary to look at the role of companies because they must bring about the real change in the top levels of their organizations. The role of companies and changing that role relates to organizational (change) theory: how can and do companies implement organizational interventions with the intention of effecting a change in their organization.

Studies in the two disciplines can complement each other and lead to a deeper understanding and to in-depth insights into the main research question posed in this PhD research, namely how gender equality at the corporate top can be achieved by means of governmental and organizational interventions. Interdisciplinary research is conducted to gain a ‘comprehensive view’ of a particular topic1 from the perspective of two disciplines. These two disciplines will be treated as being each of equal value for understanding the concept of women’s underrepresentation and gender equality.2

Legal methodologies differ substantially from social science methodologies.3 Legal research is a normative science.4 The law prescribes how people ought to behave instead of explaining, predicting or understanding how people behave.5 Legal research has to do with reviewing legislation, parliamentary documents, case law and articles written by lawyers, in which they analyze legislation or case law.6 Legal research adopts an interpretive method7 and legal sources will be used to provide convincing legal arguments and normative opinions.8 Consequently, it is not necessary for legal studies to conduct empirical research.9 However, this does not mean that it is not possible to employ empirical research in legal studies.10 In social sciences, however, research is conducted by means of empirical research that requires the collection of empirical data.11

The legal part of this PhD research (Chapter 3) provides a normative answer to the question what the law is and what results the legislation has yielded. Social sciences research employs empirical qualitative research in order to gain a rich understanding of how the interventions in the investigated companies work in practice. The research on organizational interventions is aimed at acquiring in-depth knowledge and understanding of the interventions implemented by companies to achieve gender equality at their corporate top. Accordingly, the research conducted and described in Chapter 5 aims to identify which interventions have been implemented, how they work in practice, and whether such interventions are perceived to be effective by the respondents.

The specific methodologies adopted in each chapter are discussed below. A more detailed methodology can be found in each separate chapter.

Chapter 2 discusses the barriers that hinder women in accessing the corporate top in Europe. This chapter answers sub-research question 1. The barriers were identified through a systematic review of the extant literature. The review was systemic in that specific pre-defined search terms were used for a search in multiple search engines. A systematic review was conducted to identify literature from several disciplines that was needed to examine which barriers exist and how the barriers identified by various disciplines interrelate. By doing so, a holistic overview could be gained of the barriers identified in literature, which was in turn needed to identify which barriers exist and how they interrelate. The reviewed literature stemmed from various disciplines within social science. Seven barriers and the relationships between them were identified.

Chapter 3 discusses governmental interventions - quotas - that were adopted in two EU Member States: Belgium and the Netherlands. The chapter investigates and compares the Belgian and Dutch quota legislation in terms of content and application. The research was conducted by means of doctrinal research. Legislation, parliamentary documents and literature were analyzed by means of desk-research. The research question for this specific chapter called for legal research to explain the role of legislation, in this specific case governmental interventions in the form of quota legislation, in achieving gender equality at the corporate top.

Chapter 4 consists of two parts. The first part is made up of a literature review and explains the various reasons why companies (should) strive for women at the corporate top, i.e., arguments relating to the economic business case and human rights norms. The first part was conducted based on desk research, i.e., a review of academic literature and doctrinal legal research. The second part of the study provides an analysis of empirical qualitative data that was collected by means of a questionnaire in two studies concerning compliance with the Code by Dutch listed companies. The study was specifically aimed at the corporate boards of Dutch listed companies. Part of the questionnaire was devoted to the diversity policies of these companies. The empirical qualitative method was employed to create an overview of a significant number of different types of interventions, and to gain insights into the ambitions that companies have formulated in this respect. The results of the study were used to identify which organizational interventions companies have implemented to achieve gender equality at the corporate top.

Chapter 5 contains an in-depth study into organizational interventions and was conducted by means of a comparative qualitative case study analysis12 in four Dutch companies. The comparative case study analysis strategy was used to gain in-depth insights into the organizational interventions that were implemented in the selected companies and into how these interventions work in practice. Case study research was perfectly suited to this particular question, because in case study research a phenomenon is examined within its real-world context in an in-depth manner.13 The chapter further discusses how the identified organizational interventions can be used to overcome barriers. For this chapter, the concepts defined in this introductory chapter were not used strictly, because of the inductive approach to research used for this qualitative study.