Laboratory Evidence on the Effects of Sponsorship on the Competitive Preferences of Men and Women

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Baldiga, Nancy R.; Coffman, Katherine B.
• 署名单位: College of the Holy Cross; Harvard University
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2016.2606
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 888-901
• 关键词: economics; behavior and behavioral decision making; GENDER; laboratory experiment

摘要

Sponsorship programs have been proposed as one way to promote female advancement in competitive career fields. A sponsor is someone who advocates for a protege, and in doing so, takes a stake in her success. We use a laboratory experiment to explore two channels through which sponsorship has been posited to increase advancement in a competitive workplace. In our setting, being sponsored provides a vote of confidence and/or creates a link between the protege's and sponsor's payoffs. We find that both features of sponsorship significantly increase willingness to compete among men on average, while neither of these channels significantly increases willingness to compete among women on average. As a result, sponsorship does not close the gender gap in competitiveness or earnings. We discuss how these insights from the laboratory could help to inform the design of sponsorship programs in the field.