The Role of Educational Diversity in Investor Relations

This paper shows the role of educational diversity on investor relations quality and the impact of the latter on the number of shareholder activism incidents a firm encounters. We review literature on marketing, finance, and corporate communications to develop a conceptual framework which we test using a combination of secondary data and primary data collected through a survey and interviews amongst investor relations professionals. The empirical results support the conceptual framework, showing higher investor relations quality levels and lower shareholder activism intensity for companies with educational diverse investor relations teams. In particular the presence of marketing and communication experts in investor relations teams contributes to higher investor relations quality and reduced shareholder activism