The Impact of Gender Diversity on the Performance of Business Teams: Evidence from a Field Experiment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hoogendoorn, Sander; Oosterbeek, Hessel; van Praag, Mirjam
• 署名单位: University of Amsterdam; Tinbergen Institute
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.1120.1674
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 1514-1528
• 关键词: Gender diversity; TEAM PERFORMANCE; field experiment; entrepreneurship education; Board effectiveness

摘要

This paper reports on a field experiment conducted to estimate the impact of the share of women in business teams on their performance. Teams consisting of undergraduate students in business studies start up a venture as part of their curriculum. We manipulated the gender composition of teams and assigned students randomly to teams, conditional on their gender. We find that teams with an equal gender mix perform better than male-dominated teams in terms of sales and profits. We explore various mechanisms suggested in the literature to explain this positive effect of gender diversity on performance (including complementarities, learning, monitoring, and conflicts) but find no support for them.