Ozgur Ozdemir (Hospitality) published an article, "Board Diversity and Firm Performance in the U.S. Tourism Sector: The Effect of Institutional Ownership," in the International Journal of Hospitality Management. The study examines the relationship between board diversity and firm performance in the U.S. tourism sector by using institutional ownership as a contingency that moderates this relationship. Study's hypotheses are tested with two-way, fixed-effects regression. The findings of the study indicate that board diversity is positively associated with financial performance (Tobin’s Q), and the effect of board diversity on performance is contingent upon the degree of institutional ownership. More precisely, the study finds that board diversity has a larger effect on financial performance when institutional ownership is low on a tourism firm’s ownership structure. Overall, the findings suggest that boards’ internal control and monitoring on management is important to derive higher financial performance, and even yet it is more important when external monitoring by institutional owners, proxied by percentage of institutional ownership, is weak.
