Women Directors and R&D Investments Relationship: Does Their Intellectual Capital Matter?

Recent corporate governance literature highlights the crucial role of women directors in shaping firms' strategic investments, particularly in research and development (R&D). Although existing studies often measure gender diversity by the percentage of women on boards, they overlook women directors' specific roles and characteristics. This study addresses this gap by exploring the conditions necessary to comprehend how and whether women directors influence R&D investments. Drawing on the intellectual capital-based view theory, we examine the moderating effect of women directors' intellectual capital on the relationship between board gender diversity and corporate R&D investments. A Tobit model is applied to a unique hand-collected dataset of Italian-listed industrial companies. Our findings confirm the hypotheses, revealing that foreign (human capital), interlocked (relational capital) and tenured (structural capital) women directors positively moderate the relationship between the proportion of women on the board and the firms' R&D expenditures.