The Impact of Gender Diversity on the Performance of Business Teams: Evidence from a Field Experiment
Sander Hoogendoorn, Hessel Oosterbeek, Mirjam van Praag
Management Science · 2013 · Volume 59 · Issue 7
Abstract
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. This paper was accepted by Jesper Sørensen, organizations.
Keywords
gender diversity, team performance, field experiment, entrepreneurship education, board effectiveness
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