Abstract
The board diversity literature has been growing steadily. Regulators and lawmakers are already implementing some measures to cater to the yearnings of their constituents and mandate representation on the boards of publicly traded companies. Still, some constructs such as board age diversity and their interactions remain poorly known and understudied. As firms work on succession planning and add new board seats to comply to States and NASDAQ/SEC regulatory mandates, they need some guidance on the ideal age mix and experience level to target. Under the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX), boards also have oversight over the internal controls apparatus of the firms including IT controls and technology related risks. Those critical skillsets are unfortunately not uniformly distributed across age groups. Using upper echelons theory, agency theory, and the resource-based view, this study makes the case that board age diversity can impact board effectiveness, and influence firm performance. Using rigorous analyses on 10 years of listed firms’ archival data, the results include interaction analyses and are robust to alternative statistical methods and alternative measures of both age diversity and firm performance. Moreover, a thorough industry analysis provides the nuances for 10 key industries of the U.S. economy.