Enhancing Operational Resilience through Gender Diversity in Top Management Teams: A Social System Perspective

This study examines whether top management team gender diversity enhances firms’ ability to withstand COVID-19 disruptions by sustaining operational continuity. Using a sample of 1158 Chinese listed firms in 2020, we employ an instrumental variable two-stage least squares regression model to address potential endogeneity concerns and rigorously examine the hypothesized relationships. Grounded in social system theory, our findings suggest that gender diversity as a form of requisite variety is positively related to operational resilience. In addition, the study finds that both process complexity (in the form of absorptive capacity and operational efficiency) and structure complexity (represented by business and sourcing diversification) exert moderating effects on the relationship. The study contributes significantly to the literature by substantiating the causal link between gender diversity and operational resilience and the moderating roles of operations and supply chain management factors in moderating the benefits of gender diversity to firm performance.