Gender Differences in Response to Competitive Organization? Differences Across Fields from a Product Development Platform Field Experiment

Kevin Boudreau and Nilam Kaushik

No 30062, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Prior research, primarily based on lab experiments, suggests that females might be more averse to competition than males and could be more inclined towards collaboration, instead. Were these findings to generalize to adults across the workforce, there could be profound implications for organizational design and personnel management. We report on a field experiment in which 97,678 adults from a wide range of fields and ages were invited to join a product development opportunity. Individuals were randomly assigned to treatments framing the opportunity as either involving competitive or collaborative interactions with other participants. Among those outside of science, technology, engineering, and math fields (STEM), we find significant gender differences in willingness to participate under competition. Among those in STEM fields, we detect no statistical gender differences. These results and broader patterns documented in the study are consistent with significant heterogeneity in competitiveness across both men and women, with field and career sorting resulting in differences (in gender differences) across fields.

JEL-codes: D02 D03 D9 D91 J0 J01 J2 M0 M12 M5 O3 O31 O32 O36 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hrm and nep-lab
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