Board Diversity and Firm Performance - a Study of Iran

Supervision is one of the most important duties of board of directors. In this research, relationship between board diversity and performance of the companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) has been evaluated. This evaluation has been done by studying relationship between important criteria of board diversity including age, education, gender, Board Size and firm performance. To test hypotheses of this research, information of 76 companies has been used during three-year period from the early 2009 to the late 2012 and multivariate regression model has been applied using panel data. Research results indicate the presence of positive and significant relationship between diversity of age, education and the number of the board members and performance of the companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange while there is no significant relationship between variables of gender diversity and performance of the company. Results of control variable also indicate that significance value relating to variable of debt ratio is positive and significant and significance value relating to variable of company size is negative and significant.