MIS Speaker's Series: Nishtha Langer

Image

When

1 to 2 p.m., Oct. 21, 2022

Where

Nishtha LangerAssociate Professor of Business Analytics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Title: An Empirical Examination of Women on Corporate Boards and Their Impact on Software Innovation in Uncertain and Turbulent Times

Abstract: How do women on corporate boards add value? The lack of gender diversity on corporate boards has drawn much attention in the popular press but the empirical evidence of the value of women on these boards is still lacking. Drawing on the literature on the role of diversity on firm performance, we investigate the effect of the presence of women on corporate boards on the business value of software innovations. We posit that women on corporate boards can complement software innovation, particularly in complex and competitive environments. We test these hypotheses using a panel dataset of 5,960 observations between 2002 to 2009 from 1,209 unique firms. We find that there is a positive two-way complementary relationship between the number of women on boards and the value of software patent portfolios. We also find that industry growth, industry complexity, and industry turbulence, amplify this two-way complementary relationship. We complement this with semi-structured interviews with women on board. Our results provide important contributions to the literature on software innovation, diversity in corporate boards, and competition in turbulent industrial environments. Our findings provide concrete evidence of the value of women in the board room, and we hope our study provides the necessary impetus for more diversity on corporate boards beyond tokenism.

Bio: Nishtha Langer is an Associate Professor of Business Analytics (with tenure) at the Lally School of Management, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She teaches graduate and undergraduate students on aligning the firms' Information Technology (IT) strategy and business strategies for sustained competitive advantage, exploring new markets, and enabling grounded management and economic principles through the use of IT and Business Analytics.

Dr. Langer's research analyzes the value of key IT investments and resources, including IT human capital, using inter-disciplinary theory and techniques. More recently, her research examines the biases in IT labor markets and the societal and business value of social media platforms such as Twitter. Her research has been published at top tier journals, including Management Science, Information Systems Research (ISR), MIS Quarterly, and Journal of Management Information Systems, amongst others, and widely presented and acclaimed by both academic and industry audience. Her recent publication examining gender and promotions in the IT industry has been featured on INFORMS' Resoundingly Human podcast, on NPR's Academic Minute, and elsewhere. This study was awarded a Best Publication of 2020 by the Senior Scholars Consortium, Association of Information Systems at the International Conference on Information Systems, 2021.

Before joining RPI, Dr. Langer was an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. She was also a visiting faculty at the Gies College of Business, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In a prior life, she worked as a Systems Analyst at Arbella Insurance, Boston, MA and as a Systems Engineer at Tata Infotech Ltd., India (now part of Tata Consultancy Services). She holds a Bachelor's in Engineering from Delhi College of Engineering, University of Delhi, Delhi and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Management (with specialization in Information Systems) from the Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University.

Contacts

Laura Brandimarte