Disclosure and Practices of Gender Diversity and Inclusivity by Malaysian Food and Beverage Companies

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OVERVIEW OF GENDER DIVERSITY AND INCLUSIVITY IN MALAYSIAN CONTEXT

In Malaysia context, women constitute more than half of the population and workforce in corporate sector. The Malaysian women are well educated and the number of women undergraduates is more than the men in every year. But, the women representation in the Malaysian corporate board still considered as low in recent years. According to a report from Minority Shareholder Watchdog Group (MSWG) shown that the women representation in the boardroom is about 11.7 % in 2014 (Appendix 1) (MSWG, 2014). The rates of women representation in boardroom and still lag far behind the Norway, Sweden, Finland and United Kingdom (Dieleman, Qian, and Ibrahim, 2014). But when comes to top or senior management of the company, Malaysia has 28% of female in the workforce which is the top performer in Asia Pacific region (APAC) (My Star job, 2015).

The imbalance between men and women on corporate board has drawn attention from government. In the year 2004, Malaysian government has adopted a policy, requiring at least 30% of the position at decision making level in public sector must be occupied by women (Nik Anis, 2011). The policy for public sector had been successful as the percentages had risen steadily to 32.3% in 2011 from 18.8% in 2004 (Nik Anis, 2011). In 2011, the government had extended the policy to private sector in which the company must achieve at least 30% of representation of women in corporate board and the companies are given five years to meet the target of the policy (Loh, 2011).

Besides that, in line with the objective of inclusiveness of the New Economic Model (NEP), Malaysian government had announced several measures in 2014 which aims to promote the diversity and inclusivity practices in listed company, including the disclosure of gender diversity policies in their annual report, encourage the listed companies to produce sustainability reports and includes the disclosures on composition of workforce especially the board and decision maker level (TalentCorp, 2014).

OVERVIEW OF GENDER DIVERSITY AND INCLUSIVITY IN MALAYSIAN FOOD AND BEVERAGE INDUSTRY

The Malaysian food and beverage industry is a fast-growing industry and rich in term of the tropical and agricultural resources, reflecting the significant diversity of the culture in the society. The leading branded player in the industry includes Nestle, Dutch Lady, F&N, Spritzer, and Guinness Anchor Berhad.

In recent years, many of the global food and beverages multinational company started to focus on Diversity and Inclusiveness as part of their business strategy, for example Coca-Cola has treated the diversity as the heart of their business (Coca-cola, 2014) and PepsiCo has a very strong commitment to increase the women participation in workforce especially the women leaders (PepsiCo, 2015). This making the Food and Beverage Company in worldwide including the companies in Malaysia aware of the importance of gender diversity in the company.

The food and beverage companies is operating in a rapidly changing and high risk environment due to the frequently changing of customer preferences, pricing pressures, volatility of input prices, regulatory and legislative pressure (KPMG, 2013). Therefore the diversity should come into play in order to minimise the risk and tackle the problem that arise from the changing circumstances. As we mentioned in previous section, women is the crisis manager in the company and able to provide better solution than the men leadership when the company is encountering the downturn and crisis.

Other than the threats and crisis, opportunities will also arises from the environment changes. For instances, increase in demand of processing foods when economic meltdown and increase in demand of healthy food when awareness of health lifestyle is high in the society. Placing the women in boardroom and management enable the company to have greater pool of ideas, better decision making process and enable the company to identify and make use of the opportunities to generate higher return to their shareholder.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The primary purposes of this paper is to assess the disclosure and practices of the seven (7) selected companies from the food and beverage industry particularly on gender diversity and inclusivity in the boardroom, top level management and workplace.

Content analysis will be used and this involves reviewing the companies’ annual report, sustainability report, diversity report, and company website. All reported examined were based on year 2013 and 2014. The seven (7) Malaysian Food and Beverages Companies listed in table 1 below.

Table 1: Seven Reputable Food and Beverages Companies in Malaysia

- Nestle (Malaysia) Berhad

- Guinness Anchor Berhad (GAB)

- Dutch Lady Milk Industries Berhad

- Bio Osmo Berhad

- Spritzer Berhad

- F&N Holding Berhad

- Apollo Food Holding Berhad

ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

The analysis and discussion will be presented in this section based on the any information regarding gender diversity and inclusivity in boardroom and management team that reported in the annual report, sustainability report, and corporate social responsibilities (CSR) report, and official website of the companies. The disclosure and practices of gender diversity and inclusivity in boardroom and top management will be discussed in following sections.

Table 2: Disclosure of Gender Diversity in Board Composition by Malaysian Food and Beverages Companies

Disclosed in:

Companies

Board Composition

Separate Sustainability Report

Board Diversity Policies

Board of Director Profile under Annual report

Company Website

Nestle

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