Online | The Corporate Diversity Jigsaw

About the webinar

Diversity in the corporation and specifically on the board has become an important corporate governance issue in recent times. Dr Akshaya Kalmanath argues in her forthcoming book (The Corporate Diversity Jigsaw), the aspiration should be to ensure there is diversity in the entire corporation rather than just the board. One chapter in the book assesses the effectiveness of legal and market initiatives currently deployed across jurisdictions. It argues that diversity quotas for the board and quantitative disclosure requirements regarding the board’s diversity are ineffective for a number of reasons. One major reason is that these measures encourage short-term fixes but do not push companies to take actions that help attract and retain diverse candidates at all levels, and in the long-term. Dr Kalmanath proposes that firm-specific measures will be more effective and could encourage social justice innovation at the firm level.

Abour the speaker

Dr Akshaya Kamalnath is a senior lecturer at the Australian National University, College of Law. She has law degrees from New York University (LLM), Deakin University (PhD), and NALSAR India (BA.LLB(Hons)).Akshaya’s research and teaching interests focus on the broad themes of corporate law, corporate governance, corporations and society, and corporate insolvency and her work is often comparative in nature.

About the discussant

Professor Irene-marié Esser (LLB, LLM, LLD) is a Professor of Corporate Law and Governance at the University of Glasgow at the Law School and an Extraordinary Professor at Stellenbosch University. She has been in academia for more than 15 years and was admitted as an Attorney of the High Court of South Africa in 2005. She was, until 2021, the Company Law Convener for the UK Society of Legal Scholars. Professor Esser’s work has been referenced and followed in the King IV Report on Corporate Governance, where she acted as an external advisor. She is part of the Corporate and Financial Law research group. Her research spans doctrinal and empirical approaches, covering the UK, EU and South Africa in the field of corporate governance, company law and corporate social responsibility. Prof Esser provides executive and postgraduate training at various institutions in the UK and South Africa. She is also on the editorial board of the European Business Law Review. https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/law/staff/irene-marieesser/#biography

About the chair

Iris H-Y Chiu is Professor of Corporate Law and Financial Regulation at University College London. She is Director of the UCL Centre of Ethics and Law and advances the public and stakeholder engagement of the Centre’s agenda in relation to a wide range of issues in relation to law, regulation, governance and ethics in business and finance. She has published extensively in the areas of corporate governance and financial regulation, including The Foundations and Anatomy of Shareholder Activism (2010), The Legal Framework for Internal Control in Banks and Financial Institutions (2015), Investment Management and Corporate Governance (2017), Banking Law and Regulation (2019), The Law and Governance of Decentralised Business Models (2020) and Regulating the Crypto-Economy (2021). She is a Research Fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute, and a member of its Editorial Board. She has also been appointed as Senior Scholar at the European Central Bank’s Legal Research Programme (2020).

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