Quotas for women on boards: do they work?

There are two key reasons for wanting more diversity on corporate boards: fairness to all and better organisational performance. The equality argument may be the more important one, but on its own it doesn't seem to be enough to entice organisations to actually make the changes needed. The idea of mandatory quotas for women in boards has been around for some time. There are, currently, 10 countries who have mandatory quotas for the number of women on boards and 15 other countries who have non-binding quotas. The penalties for non-compliance vary, from nothing, to forced dissolution. But what impact do these mandatory quotas have on individuals, organisations and society? Are they working?

First, do we know that having women on boards is definitely a good thing?

There has been plenty of research out there about the impact of women on boards. The evidence isn't always very rigorous methodologically, and the results tend to be a bit mixed. Interpreting the evidence is also tricky because the issues are so bound up with attitudes and policies - it's hard sometimes to dis-aggregate the impact of women on boards from general trends in social attitudes.

Post and Byron (2015) conducted a meta-analysis (140 studies over 5 countries involving over 90,000 firms) and reached some interesting conclusions.

1) having a mixed gender board seems to make the board more efficient and effective at it basic job of providing strong governance to the organisation. Having women on boards is positively associated with accounting returns (especially in countries with strong shareholder protection which means that board members are held accountable for their decisions), monitoring (women seem to make stricter ethical judgements and are more risk-averse) and strategy involvement (this is corroborated by Nielsen & Huse, 2010, in their study in Noway).

2.) having a mixed gender board is not correlated with market performance overall (although there is a positive correlation with market performance in countries where there is gender parity, and a negative one in countries where there is little gender parity - the authors' assumption is that this is linked to attitudes about women). This finding was corroborated by another meta-analysis the same year (Pletzer et al., 2015)

Terjesen, Sealy & Singh, (2010) conducted a systematic literature review. They found empirical papers which came to fairly similar conclusions.

1) having women on boards leads to better governance performance (eg Adams & Ferreria, 2007; Singh & Vinnicombe, 2014) and greater board independence (Fondas & Sassalos, 2000)

2) They found mixed results about the financial performance (eg Catylist, 2007 which showed a positive correlation and Catylist, 2014 which showed a negative one).

3) They examined 'trickle down' impact of having more women on boards - the degree to which an increase in gender diversity at board level led to greater gender diversity further down the organisation. They found a little bit of positive evidence that mixed boards are positively linked with the number of women in senior roles in the organisation (Billimoria, 2006, looking at firms in the US). This study was time lagged ie compared the number of senior women before and after the addition of women to the board, so can offer some hint of causality. 

Overall, women on boards seems to have a positive impact on governance and possibly some broader impact on better gender representation. But the studies included in these papers above incorporated evidence from companies who had chosen, voluntarily,  to select female board-members. You could argue that those companies may have a more inclusive culture which has an impact on the outcomes. Are the same outcomes seen in firms who are mandated to include women on their boards?

What about mandated quotas of women on boards: what impact does that have?

The evidence for the impact of mandatory quotas is limited, conflicting and not always methodologically rigorous. Norway was one of the early adopters (initial legislation in 2002), with the highest proportion mandated (40%) and the strictest penalties (dissolution). Perhaps for these reasons, there seems to have been far more written about the situation in Norway than anywhere else. But as we know, countries and cultures vary tremendously, so the findings in Norway aren't necessarily generalisable to other countries. Compounding this, is the fact that the financial crash happened in Norway during the time of the introduction of mandatory quotas, making it difficult to be sure whether the impact seen in before-and-after studies is traceable to the reforms or if it is more influenced by the economic situation (Hughes, Paxton & Krook, 2017). 

There are however some consistent messages from the literature. 

1.) Firm Performance
A key reason that firms might want to increase the representation of women on boards is to increase overall firm performance. Two studies have identified that more diverse boards lead to lower profits, in the short term. Matsa and Miller (2013) compared firms with mandated quotas in Norway to those in the rest of Scandinavia, and found that women on boards leads to fewer job losses and therefore more labour costs, which in turn leads to loss of profit. The authors stress then that this is not a sign that the firms are under-performing, but an indication that they may be pursuing a long term strategy. This reflects the findings of Adams and Ferreria's 2009 survey, of women on boards in the US, which showed that women board members were more likely to prioritise long term strategies. Ahern and Dittman (2010) also found a decrease in short term profits after the reforms in Norway, (measuring before-and-after data) but attributed it to the nature of the female board members. In their analysis, they identified that the female board members tended to be younger and less experienced than their male counterparts. When these factors were controlled for, the negative impact of women on profits disappeared (although see Nygaard 2011 for a critique of Ahern and Dittman's sampling process). Eckbo, Nygaard and Thorburn (2016) used what Hughes et al.(2017) suggest is a more methodologically rigorous approach and extended the period of study until 2013, and found no statistically significant impact on firm value or profitability. 

2.) Trickle-down effect
One reason for wanting to see more women at the top of organisations is the positive trickle down impact it may have on other women. One oft-cited reason for the under-representation of women in senior roles is the lack of visible role models: a quota system could offer a way to address this. But the evidence is not clear cut. Bertrand et al. (2014), (again looking at Norway) found no significant impact on representation of women in other senior position, no impact on other women who were equally well-qualified non-board members and no significant (although there was a small n-s impact) on the gender wage gap. Looking beyond the organisations themselves, Bertrand et al. also found no impact on the number of women enrolling on business courses. 
Wang and Kelan (2013) compared Norwegian firms before and after the reforms and found that the diverse boards had a positive impact on the number of female board chairs and the number of female CEOs in the Norway. It seems strange that these two studies looking at the same population found contradictory evidence. Their samples were different, and this could go some way to explaining the inconsistent findings. Wang and Kelan used the companies in Norway who were listed on the stock exchange (n=224) and Bertrand et al. used data on individuals in the country from the Norwegian Registry Data.

3.) Better boards
A number of studies have looked at the impact of the quotas on the nature of the boards themselves. In the findings of a qualitative study Elstad and Ladegard (2010) found that the women on boards felt better treated after the reforms were introduced, finding that they had more access to information, more influence and more social interaction with other board members than they had before. Bertrand et al. (2014) found that the average qualifications of the women on boards increased and the gender pay gap decreased after the reform. Adams and Fererria found that diverse boards in the US (no mandatory quotas) were stronger monitors, but despite these findings, the authors did not advocate for mandated quotas, and this is because of the somewhat complex relationship between governance and firm performance. Their findings seemed to indicate that stronger monitoring is linked to better firm performance for organisations who have otherwise weak governance (and therefore a diverse board would add value in this context) but for organisations who already have strong governance, the addition of a diverse workforce might lead to over-monitoring and therefore weaken performance. 

4.) The impact of the mandatory quotas varies with the design of the quota system
There is some evidence that the design of the quota system makes a difference to the overall impact. Konrad and Kramer (2005) suggest that there need to be 3 or more women on a board to see any impact at all. This then may have an impact on the empirical evidence, which may include data from boards with just 1 or 2 women. There was also some interesting evidence from Norway which showed that a significant proportion of firms (28%, according to Nygaard, 2011) either shifted from being PLCs (who are obliged to meet the quotas) to LTDs (who are not), after the reforms were announced, or moved their headquarters to the UK (where there are is no such legislation). Sojo et al., (2016) found evidence that stronger enforcement methods were linked with higher female representation - so having strict penalties for non-compliance did make a difference to the number of women on boards. This may not sound terribly surprising, but does offer some evidence that the lack of women on boards elsewhere is not a consequence of women's lack of interest: when firms want to, they can find women who are keen to take on these roles. 

So what is our conclusion? It's probably too soon to call. There need to be more methodologically robust studies examining the longer term outcomes and more studies from countries other than Norway. The early indications seem to be that the outcomes from quotas are similar to the impact in organisations who have chosen to select women onto boards voluntarily. There doesn't seem to be a dearth of women interested in these positions, and there seems to be some sense that women on the boards increases the strength of board governance. The impact on profits and on gender representation are unclear, but the mandatory quotas don't appear to have harmed either. It seems then that the quotas don't harm; might help; are definitely fairer; but haven't proved to be a magic bullet. 



References

Adams, R. & Ferreira, D. (2009). Women in the Boardroom and their Impact on Governance and Performance. Journal of Financial Economics, 94(2): 291-309.

Ahern, K. R., & Dittmar, A. K. (2012). The changing of the boards: The impact on firm valuation of mandated female board representation. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 127(1), 137-197.

Bertrand, M., Black, S. E., Jensen, S., & Lleras-Muney, A. (2014). Breaking the glass ceiling? The effect of board quotas on female labor market outcomes in Norway. The Review of Economic Studies.

Bilimoria, D. (2006). The Relationship Between Women Corporate Directors and Women Corporate Officers. Journal of Managerial Issues, 18(1): 47-61.

Brammer et al., 2007 suggest that having women on boards improves governance and makes sure that the board better represents the customers - making it more likely to lead to a commercial advantage.

Bøhren, Ø., & Staubo, S. (2014). Does mandatory gender balance work? Changing organizational form to avoid board upheaval. Journal of Corporate Finance, 28, 152-168.

Bøhren, Ø., & Staubo, S. (2016). Mandatory gender balance and board independence. European Financial Management, 22(1), 3-30.

Dale-Olsen, H., Schøne, P., & Verner, M. (2013). Diversity among Norwegian boards of directors: Does a quota for women improve firm performance?. Feminist Economics, 19(4), 110-135.

Eckbo, B. Espen and Nygaard, Knut and Thorburn, Karin S.,  (2016) Does Gender-Balancing the Board Reduce Firm Value? (March 2016). CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP11176. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2766471

Hughes, M. M., Paxton, P., & Krook, M. L. (2017). Gender quotas for legislatures and corporate boards. Annual Review of Sociology, 43, 331-352.


Kogut, B., Colomer, J., & Belinky, M. (2014). Structural equality at the top of the corporation: Mandated quotas for women directors. Strategic Management Journal, 35(6), 891-902.

Lückerath-Rovers, M. (2013). Women on boards and firm performance. Journal of Management & Governance, 17(2), 491-509. This study explores data from The Netherlands. 

Matsa, David A., and Amalia R. Miller. 2013. "A Female Style in Corporate Leadership? Evidence from Quotas."American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 5 (3): 136-69.

Nielsen, S., & Huse, M. (2010). The contribution of women on boards of directors: Going beyond the surface. Corporate governance: An international review, 18(2), 136-148.

Pande, R., & Ford, D. (2012). Gender quotas and female leadership.World Bank Report

Post, C., & Byron, K. (2015). Women on boards and firm financial performance: A meta-analysis. Academy of Management Journal, 58(5), 1546-1571.


Smith, N. (2014). Quota regulations of gender composition on boards of directors. CESifo DICE Report, 12(2), 42-48. (Report).

Sojo, V. E., Wood, R. E., Wood, S. A., & Wheeler, M. A. (2016). Reporting requirements, targets, and quotas for women in leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 27(3), 519-536.

Terjesen, S., & Sealy, R. (2016). Board gender quotas: Exploring ethical tensions from a multi-theoretical perspective. Business Ethics Quarterly, 26(1), 23-65.

Terjesen, S., Sealy, R., & Singh, V. (2009). Women directors on corporate boards: A review and research agenda. Corporate governance: an international review, 17(3), 320-337.

Wang, M., & Kelan, E. (2013). The gender quota and female leadership: Effects of the Norwegian gender quota on board chairs and CEOs. Journal of business ethics, 117(3), 449-466.

Meaningful Careers

I'm updating my lecture on job satisfaction in preparation for the new term, and I've notice a lot of new articles about one particular aspect: meaningful work. It's hardly new as an idea - the very first researchers who were looking at the antecedents of job satisfaction back in the early part of the 20th century were aware that it was important for work to bring meaning to lives, and Hackman and Oldham's job characteristics model from 1976 included the idea of 'task significance' which is a similar concept. Then in the early part of this century there was some interest in meaning from fans of the Protean career (Hall and Mirvis, 1996) which conceptualises the ideal (Protean) career as one which is self-directed and values-driven. Dik and Duff too conducted considerable research into the idea of a vocation, which is a similar notion. But I do still see a bit of a rise in interest in the idea of meaningful work. 

I have been doing some research of my own which examines the factors which psychology undergraduates (n=423) feel are important to their job choices, and the number 1 factor is having a job that is meaningful (to themselves or to others). So it's clearly something that young people are looking for. 

The research which looks at the benefits seems quite compelling. Hu and Hirsh (2017) conducted a meta-analysis  (using 146 studies, n=70,000+) and found that from an individual perspective, meaningful work is linked to higher job satisfaction (and that's a correlation of 0.66, which is really quite high), hope, life meaning and life satisfaction (0.48, which again, for this kind of outcome is quite impressive). It also seems to reduce the chances of stress and burnout. For an organisation too, offering opportunities for meaningful work will reap rewards. The same meta-analysis saw meaningful work linked to higher levels of performance, commitment, engagement, organisational citizenship behaviours, and reduced negative behaviours and intention to quit.

The same authors also published a series of studies which demonstrated that people are prepared to accept lower salaries if they believe the work is meaningful to them. 

So what exactly is meaningful work? Lysova and colleagues (2018) suggest that it needs to feel personally fulfilling and worthwhile. It's linked to the idea of a vocation, but isn't quite the same - meaningful work predicts the likelihood of living your calling, but it lacks the transcendental summons aspect of a vocation. 

Lysova et al. conducted a review of the literature on this topic and came up with a multi-level framework which explains what meaningful work looks like and how it comes about. You can see that it integrates aspects of the individual, the job, the organisation and the social culture. 

Individual level	A positive personality and good job performance
	Someone who is intrinsically motivated to work for the greater good and who feels work volition
	Working collaboratively, with autonomy and work that syncs with ones self-concept
Job level	White-collar jobs which are adequately resourced. Feeling valued and being treated fairly
	Autonomy and the chance to craft the job
Organisational level	Great leadership and organisational communication
	Innovative, supportive and ethical culture. Lack of hierarchical culture.
	Career development support; CSR focus
	Good workplace relationships and social-moral culture
Societal factors	Access to decent work
	Cultural norms which emphasise work as a pathway to fulfillment and value individual fulfillment and wellbeing

This list leads to some useful suggestions for what we can do to make work more meaningful.

One of the key messages is about job crating. This is the process of changing aspects of the nature of a job once you are in post (Wrzesniewski, & Dutton, 2001). Job crafting has been linked to a number of positive personal and organisational outcomes, including meaningfulness. Meaningfulness is such a personal construct that it is not possible for an organisation to design a meaningful job as such, because what is meaningful to one person might not be to another. Instead, organisations needs to allow individuals the scope to craft their own jobs, and people need to make sure that they are carving out the role that will work for them. Job crafting works as individuals shape their jobs to give themselves more autonomy, more support and to spend less time on emotionally demanding projects. 


References
Hu, J., & Hirsh, J. (2017). The Benefits of Meaningful Work: A Meta-Analysis. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2017, No. 1, p. 13866). Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of Management.
Hu, J., & Hirsh, J. B. (2017). Accepting Lower Salaries for Meaningful Work. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 1649.
Lysova, E. I., Allan, B. A., Dik, B. J., Duffy, R. D., & Steger, M. F. (2018). Fostering meaningful work in organizations: A multi-level review and integration. Journal of Vocational Behavior.
Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E. (2001). Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters of their work. Academy of management review, 26(2), 179-201.

Women's careers - what exactly is the problem?

Between the publicity around the gender pay gap, the Me Too campaign and the centenary of women getting the vote in the UK earlier this year, the issue of women's careers is very much on my mind. Arguments are sometimes made that there isn't really a problem with sexism in the UK, and that women have all the opportunities that men have, if only they chose to take advantage of them. But I think that's far too simplistic a reading of the situation.

In truth, it's a really complex and deeply entrenched situation. I have tried below to identify some of the different strands of arguments. I have simplified the arguments greatly to make my points clearly, and I talk in broad generalisations. The ideas of course do not apply to all in all contexts, but I think the claims I am making are widespread enough to make each of them problematic. 

So how do we know there is a problem?

1.) Positions of power and influence. Although women make up 50% of the workforce, they make up a far smaller proportion of the jobs which carry the most influence:  board members, cabinet officers, newspaper editors, CEOs of large companies, directors, conductors, partners etc.. This is problematic because i) diverse teams perform better, so these functions will be more effective if women as well as men are contributing to decisions and cultures, ii) because women are probably not being given the opportunities to fulfill their potential, and iii) because having one demographic group having power over another isn't likely to lead to decisions which offer the best opportunities to people in all demographic groups.
2.) Types of work. There are many jobs which are dominated by either men or women: nurses are predominantly women, software engineers are mostly men. This is potentially problematic because i) these jobs would probably be done better if there were a more diverse mix in the workforce and ii) the statistics might imply that men and women don't actually have enough free choice to pursue the most fulfilling job for them.
3.) Unpaid work. Our nation relies on a considerable amount of unpaid work in the home to function effectively: children need to be looked after, ageing parents cared for, meals cooked, laundry washed and homes cleaned. Women do a disproportionate amount of this work, and as a result of these responsibilities, women's paid work outside the home often takes second place. Because we live in the kind of society which values what it pays for, women end up undervalued both in their unpaid domestic work, and in their lower paid employment.

So if those are the symptoms, what are the causes? What has led to women and men opting for or being forced into different paths?

Social norms
1.) Parenting. Our culture has certain expectations which are deeply ingrained in us all. We have a clear sense of what makes a 'good mother' - warmth, nurturing, home baking, picking up from school at 3.30. And of what makes a 'good father' - fun, sport and earning a decent wage to provide for his family. It's hard for us to deviate from these social norms - it takes a lot of commitment and individual determination to convince yourself that you are a good mother when you don't conform to society's stereotypes. 
2.) Work role stereotypes: we also have assumptions about what kind of person excels in different kinds of occupations. We expect senior leaders to be men, and nurses to be women. These stereotypes have an influence on people making their career choices; on the people making the hiring decisions, and on our colleagues, customers and managers.
3.) Gendered behaviour: we expect men and women to behave differently, and we like people more when they behave in line with our expectations. For women wanting to move up in their careers, this is a particular challenge, as they find themselves caught in a double bind: to be liked they need to be feminine  and to be respected as leaders, they need to be masculine. 

Biology 
1.) Parenting. Women are the only ones who can give birth and breast feed. This should not be an insurmountable issue for us to address, but it does mean that the easy default position places women at the heart of child rearing whilst the men earn the wages. Women's propensity to give birth can also lead employers to feel that a 28 year old recently married man is more likely to be a better long term investment than his wife.
2.) Physiological differences. It's tricky to know exactly how much is down to social norms, and how much is down to biological differences, but it seems that there are some biological differences which could plausibly influence the kinds of jobs we are drawn to and the kinds of jobs we are good at. Men are generally stronger than women, so there are some jobs they will be more naturally capable of - this doesn't apply to that many jobs, and with technology, it's becoming less and less of an issue. Men are also generally more competitive than women and this I think poses more of a challenge: a competitive style will tend to win out over a collaborate one, because the competitive person wants to win. 

Psychology
1.) Attraction. Women who want to be nurturing mothers are attracted to men who want to and are capable of providing for an protecting their families. This means that the family decision as to who goes out to work and who earns the money is likely to be compounded by both parents: both the mother and the father want the mother to fulfill the key nurturing role and the father to fulfill the key bread winning role. The other side of this coin is that women are aware that they are more likely to be attractive to men if they behave in a traditionally feminine way and so this behaviour is rewarded.
2.) Confidence. Men tend to have more confidence in their abilities than women. We tend to have confidence in people who are confident about themselves. So men find it easier to convince employers, voters, customers and interviewers of their abilities. 
3.) Masculinity has higher status. Things associated with men tend to have a higher status than things associated with women. There is far more talk about wanting women to access the opportunities that men have, than the other way round: society seems to think it's more problematic that women aren't CEOs than that men don't get to be stay-at-home dads. This is because traditionally masculine roles have higher status than traditionally feminine ones. This can be quite clearly seen in children, where girls are often seen wearing blue trousers and playing with cars, but boys are rarely seen wearing pink dresses and playing with dolls. In adult life too, men are assumed to be more capable than women - women need to be better than men to be judged as equal. 
4) Similarity bias. We tend to feel comfortable surrounded by people like us. This means that girls who are interested in computer coding might not study it because they might fear that they will be massively outnumbered by boys, and that stay at home dads are likely to feel less comfortable at the school gates. It also means that employers in male dominated fields are less likely to want to employ women.

Experience
1.) Social circles. Your first and most powerful careers education comes from those you see around you. The jobs you can see within your social circle have a significant impact on your understanding of what jobs there are, and what kind of people do them. 
2.) Role models. If you can't see 'women like you' in particular roles, it is difficult to imagine that you could make it, and it's hard to work out the best path. Role models can be real people or fictional characters. 
3.) Structures. Many of the systems within our society have been developed either by men, or to suit men. This can make them less attractive to women and can lead women to believe that they would be unlikely to find success in these fields. Our adversarial system of the Houses of Parliament is one example of a structure that is very masculine. It plays to the strengths of the competitive and combative of many men and there seems to be no obvious place for the more typically cooperative and collaborative female approach. Women listening to Prime Minister's Questions from Parliament might well feel that they would not fit in and could not succeed in this kind of environment. Job applications highlight the importance of confidence, as jobs are more likely to be given to candidates who present confident versions of themselves, and this is more likely to be seen in men than women. Women therefore see time and time again that men are more likely to succeed, and this inevitably and erroneously erodes their belief in their own abilities. 

These factors combine to lead to a number of different outcomes:

1) Individual choices: society has moved on to allowing women access to almost anything they want to go for, but women choose not to take advantage of the opportunities available. This is because: i) they want to be nurturing mothers and it's hard to combine this with being a successful worker; ii) they want to be likeable and attractive and it's hard to be a successful women if you are likeable and attractive  iii) they find that they lack the competitive edge which could get them to the top iv) their partners are in demanding jobs and someone needs to be able to drop the kids at school v) they don't like feeling out of place in a masculine environment, vi) their husbands' do actually have greater earning potential than they do, so it makes economic sense for the family to support his career and vii) they don't believe they can make it. 

2) Discrimination: If women decide to pursue their careers, they then are met with barriers all along the way. These barriers are often unconscious, so can be very difficult to combat. Barriers include that i) women sound less confident about themselves, so are assumed to be less competent; ii) women are likely to be judged as either competent or likeable - not both, and people are generally looking for a recruit who is both competent and likeable ; iii) employers assume that women will leave to have children and come back less committed to their work; iv) employers assume that part timer workers and mothers are less committed to their work than full timers and fathers; v) women are generally judged to be inferior to men; vi) women can't see many other women succeeding in some arenas which means that it is more difficult for them to imagine succeeding and don't have a template for how it's done.

I've tried to express this in the most simplistic, straightforward way, and the picture still looks incredibly complicated. And this is why it's proving so hard to solve. The challenges are biological and unconscious and centre on our identities and these are three tough cookies to crack. The messages we get are consistent, pervasive and they come at us from the moment we are born. I'm sure there are solutions, but I might save them for another post. 

Does coaching actually work?

I'm giving a lecture about this next week, and thought I should try to get this clear in my own mind first, so I've done a bit of a trawl through the recent literature about the topic to see what we know.

First of all, it was interesting to note that coaching is definitely on the increase. The industry is growing, the number of clients who are being coached is on the up, and the fees that coaches are charging seems to be increasing too. But the evidence base for whether or not, and how coaching works, is lagging behind a bit.

The effectiveness of coaching is a hard thing to measure. It's hard to work out what you should be measuring - whether that is the degree to which an individual has met their own goals, behavioural change, increased productivity, or work engagement. Perhaps we should be going beyond the individual to examine the impact on the organisation - asking a coachee's team whether they are feeling any effects of their manager's coaching, or looking at the organisation's overall profitability. Then even if you are clear about what you are looking to measure, it is not always easy to be sure that it's the coaching which has made the difference. Performance, attitude and productivity are influenced by all sorts of different factors, so it's hard to feel confident that coaching has made the difference. Finally, the nature of coaching will vary tremendously. Coaches vary in their style and their competence, they drawn on different theoretical models, and they are likely to get on better with some clients than others. Then there is the challenge, associated with much academic publishing, that studies which find a positive outcome are far more likely to get published than those which don't, so even if we can see positive effects of coaching reported in the literature, that may not be the whole story.

But despite these challenges, there has been some decent research which explores the issues.

A number of small scale studies have found positive links between coaching and goal accomplishment (Fischer & Beimer, 2009), professional growth (McGriffin & Obonya, 2010), professional relationships (Kombarakaran et al., 2005), managerial flexibility (Jones, Rafferty & Griffin, 2006), productivity (Olivero, Bane & Kopelma, 1997) and resilience and workplace well-being (Grant et al., 2010).

On the back of these kinds of small scale studies, two larger meta-analyses have been conducted. 

Theeboom, Beerma and van Vianen (2014) looked at all different kinds of coaching (executive, life and health) and examined specifically the impact on the individual. They found that coaching overall had a significant positive impact on clients, and specifically helped with skill development, well-being, their ability to cope and attitudes to work. They found no link between outcomes and number of sessions, although offered the plausible explanation that people facing more complex challenges were more likely to end up having longer coaching relationships.

Jones, Woods and Guillaume (2016) conducted another meta-analysis of studies which had been conducted into executive, or workplace training and found some encouraging findings. They found that coaching has a positive impact overall on organisation outcomes, and at the individual level, people benefited from coaching in terms of their skill development, their attitude towards work and they achieved better results. They also found that internal coaches (not line managers) were a little more effective than external ones, but there was no discernible difference between face to face and blended (ie face to face plus online) coaching and that (echoing Theeboom et al.'s findings) the number of coaching sessions didn't seem to matter either.

Drilling down to examine how exactly coaching works, the spotlight definitely seems to come to rest on the working alliance - or the relationship between the coach and the coachee. This echoes what decades of research into psychotherapy have found, which is that the specific approach the practitioner chooses to take doesn't seem to matter much; what matters instead is what they call the common factors which basically seems to boil down to a positive relationship, trust, an unconditional positive regard. One of the biggest studies which explores this in coaching, was conducted by de Haan and his colleagues in 2016, and explored the links between perceptions of the coaching relationship and coaching effectiveness. The authors looked at nearly 2000 client-coach pairs, and found that the client's perception of the relationship was closely linked to their perception of coaching effectiveness, particularly so when the working alliance was focused on goals and tasks. They also identified that a good working alliance enhanced the client's self-efficacy, and this increased confidence led to more effective outcomes.



References

de Haan, E., Grant, A. M., Burger, Y., & Eriksson, P. O. (2016). A large-scale study of executive and workplace coaching: The relative contributions of relationship, personality match, and self-efficacy. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 68(3), 189.

De Meuse, K. P., Dai, G., & Lee, R. J. (2009). Evaluating the effectiveness of executive coaching: Beyond ROI?. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, 2(2), 117-134.

Fischer, R. L., & Beimers, D. (2009). “Put me in, Coach”: A pilot evaluation of executive coaching in the nonprofit sector. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 19(4), 507-522.

Grover, S., & Furnham, A. (2016). Coaching as a developmental intervention in organisations: A systematic review of its effectiveness and the mechanisms underlying it. PloS one, 11(7), e0159137.

Kombarakaran, F. A., Yang, J. A., Baker, M. N., & Fernandes, P. B. (2008). Executive coaching: it works!. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 60(1), 78.

Jones, R. A., Rafferty, A. E., & Griffin, M. A. (2006). The executive coaching trend: Towards more flexible executives. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 27(7), 584-596.

Jones, R. J., Woods, S. A., & Guillaume, Y. R. (2016). The effectiveness of workplace coaching: A meta‐analysis of learning and performance outcomes from coaching. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 89(2), 249-277.

Olivero, G., Bane, K. D., & Kopelman, R. E. (1997). Executive coaching as a transfer of training tool: Effects on productivity in a public agency. Public personnel management, 26(4), 461-469.

Theeboom, T., Beersma, B., & van Vianen, A. E. (2014). Does coaching work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual level outcomes in an organizational context. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 9(1), 1-18.