Do Gender-Diverse Teams Deliver Better Operational Performance: An Experimental Study
通过实验室实验，发现性别平衡的团队比性别不均的团队更快形成稳定协作模式，适应变化能力更强，并在正常和变化条件下通过资源与时间效率带来更好的经济效益。
The routines-based approach to operations management emphasizes the role of routines in operational performance. However, little is known about how gender diversity in teams could alter coordination and change behaviors of team members, potentially impacting performance. In this study, we report on two laboratory experiments that induce routines to assess the stability of coordination and adaptability to organizational changes across mixed-gender teams of varying diversity and empirically examine operational performance via routines. Based on frequentist and Bayesian statistical approaches, our findings reveal that compared to other mixed-gender teams, balanced-gender teams (a) attain stability in routines faster, (b) exhibit varying levels of adaptability to internal and external changes, and (c) deliver better economic benefits via resource- and time-efficiencies under normal and change conditions, and this is attributable to their higher pace of routine formation. We find the operational-performance effect more prominent in situations of change than in normal conditions. Alongside our theoretical contributions, our study has several implications for management and effective operations management in terms of team composition, hiring, and staffing decisions.