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Do Women Prefer a Co-operative Work Environment?

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Kuhn

    (Department of Economics, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2127 North Hall, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9210)

  • Marie-Claire Villeval

    (Université de Lyon, Lyon, F-69007, France ; CNRS, GATE Lyon St Etienne,F-69130 Ecully, France)

Abstract
Are women disproportionately attracted to work environments where cooperation rather than competition is rewarded ? This paper reports the results of a real-effort experiment in which participants choose between an individual compensation scheme and a team-based payment scheme. We find that women are more likely than men to select team-based compensation in our baseline treatment, but women and men join teams with equal frequency when we add an efficiency advantage to team production. Using a simple structural discrete choice framework to reconcile these facts, we show that three elements can account for the observed patterns in the team-entry gender gap : (1) a gender gap in confidence in others (i.e. women are less pessimistic about their prospective teammates’ relative ability), (2) a greater responsiveness among men to instrumental reasons for joining teams, and (3) a greater “pure” preference for working in a team environment among women.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Kuhn & Marie-Claire Villeval, 2011. "Do Women Prefer a Co-operative Work Environment?," Working Papers 1127, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon.
    • Handle: RePEc:gat:wpaper:1127
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Men, Women and Teams
      by Christopher Shea in Ideas Market on 2011-11-11 23:52:34
    2. Women prefer cooperative work environments
      by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2011-10-24 19:01:00

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Vanessa Mertins & Wolfgang Hoffeld, 2015. "Do Overconfident Workers Cooperate Less? The Relationship Between Overconfidence and Cooperation in Team Production," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(4), pages 265-274, June.
    2. Andreas Leibbrandt & John A. List, 2015. "Do Women Avoid Salary Negotiations? Evidence from a Large-Scale Natural Field Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(9), pages 2016-2024, September.
    3. Johannes Ludsteck, 2014. "The Impact of Segregation and Sorting on the Gender Wage Gap: Evidence from German Linked Longitudinal Employer-Employee Data," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 67(2), pages 362-394, April.
    4. Dutcher, E. Glenn & Saral, Krista Jabs, 2012. "Does Team Telecommuting Affect Productivity? An Experiment," MPRA Paper 41594, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Anya Samek, 2019. "Gender Differences in Job Entry Decisions: A University-Wide Field Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(7), pages 3272-3281, July.
    6. Peter Kuhn & Marie Claire Villeval, 2015. "Are Women More Attracted to Co‐operation Than Men?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 125(582), pages 115-140, February.
    7. Marie-Pierre Dargnies, 2012. "Men Too Sometimes Shy Away from Competition: The Case of Team Competition," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(11), pages 1982-2000, November.
    8. E. Glenn Dutcher & Krista Jabs Saral, 2012. "The Impact of Beliefs on Effort in Telecommuting Teams," Working Papers 2012-22, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    9. Friesen, Lana & Gangadharan, Lata, 2012. "Individual level evidence of dishonesty and the gender effect," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(3), pages 624-626.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    gender; cooperation; self-selection; confidence; experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • M5 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics

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