Leadership diversity and firms' AI engagement: Evidence from female executives in China

This study examines how gender diversity in top management teams influences firms' engagement with artificial intelligence (AI), an area that remains underexplored despite growing interest in corporate AI adoption. Using a panel of Chinese listed firms from 2008 to 2022, we distinguish between two dimensions of AI engagement: AI-related disclosure in annual reports and AI adoption captured through operational investment and patents. We find that firms with greater female representation in top management disclose more AI-related information, particularly when female executives possess greater structural power, academic prestige, or external social networks. Moreover, female executives' functional expertise matters for substantive AI engagement. Manufacturing expertise is associated with deeper AI implementation in operations, while R&D expertise is linked to stronger AI-related innovation. Our main results are robust to alternative measures, propensity score matching, and instrumental variable estimation. Overall, these findings highlight the strategic role of female executives in shaping firms' responses to emerging AI technologies in an emerging-market context and point to avenues for future research on leadership and digital transformation.