Directors' digital expertise and board diversity: empirical evidence from Dutch boards

Given recent corporate governance, strategy, and information systems literature, we propose that the digitalization of our economy can have consequences for the tasks for non-executive directors. Hence, firms now need digital expertise within boardrooms. This might influence overall board diversity. Thus, we ask whether firms bring digital experts to boardrooms, whether these experts are different with respect to non-job-related and job-related diversity dimensions and hence increase boards’ overall diversity, and whether different types of digital experts differ with respect to these diversity dimensions. Interestingly, digital directors do not seem to differ much from non-digital directors with respect to gender, age, and nationality. However, digital board members have a lower tenure on the board and within the company. Furthermore, looking at an overall demographic diversity measure based on gender, age, tenure, and nationality, the results show that the group of non-digital directors is more diverse than the group of digital directors.