1.5.1 Corporate top

For this research, the term corporate top is used to define all high-level decision-making positions within companies, such as senior management, director positions and board positions (management board and supervisory board). Existing academic literature does not define the concept of a corporate top. Instead, references are found, for instance, to ‘corporate top-level positions’1 or ‘corporate top management’,2 but these terms are not clearly defined. In addition, different terminology is used in legislation and literature to describe top corporate positions. See for instance, in Eagly and Karau, Gabaldon et al., Hernandez Bark et al. and Kossek et al.,3 all of whom mainly refer to the term leadership, whereas Michailidis et al., Nagy and Shortland4 mainly refer to management. These terms are, however, sometimes also used interchangeably. Moreover, positions can mean different things per company and/or country. Therefore, one term has been adopted for this PhD research. For this research, the definition of the corporate top is used to refer to all high-level decision-making positions within companies, such as senior management, director positions and board positions (management board and supervisory board).