Why Women Collaborate, Men Work Alone,
And Everybody's Angry
At
the intersection of selfishness and team structure is an interesting lesson
about gender.
It's
a study of rare quality that can aggravate chauvinists and feminists equally.
But
the work of Peter J. Kuhn and Marie-Claire Villeval for the National Bureau of
Economic Research may be able to do just that.
In
their new paper, "Are Women More Attracted to
Cooperation Than Men?,"
the economists found that, yes, women are--and it has to do with relative competence, the degree to which you
think your ability matches up against that of your colleagues. In short, men
tend to overestimate their abilities and downplay those of their coworkers,
while women shortchange their skills and defer to their peers.
It's
fascinating that this correlates with compensation as well. According to the
study, women are more aware of "inequity aversion," a discomfort with
with the feeling that not everyone is getting a fair deal, like if some of your
colleagues are making way more money than others--while men are less sensitive
to the asymmetry.
But
this compensatory bias can be altered with a little savvy structuring. Writing
at the Atlantic, Derek Thompson shows us
how the researchers created the conditions for compensation balance to be
restored (or instituted):
Kuhn
and Villeval cleverly ran an experiment allowing men and women to select
teamwork versus solo work, and then reran the experiment, increasing the
returns from excellent teamwork by about 10%. Once they did this, the
cooperation gap between men and women disappeared.
So
if compensation is clearly oriented toward the team, then men will jump at the
chance to work more closely with their colleagues. This shows how something as
simple as organizational structures--which are easy to leave unexamined--shape
the behavior of the people in them. Which is why, perhaps, we should take an
update from Yammer, the enterprise social network, and start iterating the way we construct our
companies.
By:
Drake Baer
http://www.fastcompany.com/3020561/leadership-now/why-women-collaborate-men-work-alone-and-everybodys-mad?partner
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