Gender-balanced teams produce more innovative, impactful scientific work, according to new research from MSU, Northwestern, Notre Dame and NYU
IMAGE: RESEARCH TEAMS WITH A BALANCE OF MEN AND WOMEN, LIKE THAT OF MSU PROFESSOR EVANGELYN ALOCILJA (SHOWN HERE — ALOCILJA IS IN THE FRONT LEFT OF THIS IMAGE), PERFORM MORE INNOVATIVE AND IMPACTFUL WORK, ACCORDING TO NEW WORK FROM MSU, NORTHWESTERN, NOTRE DAME AND NYU view more
CREDIT: CREDIT: DERRICK L. TURNER
EAST LANSING, Mich. – Scientists often need to ask hard questions to make the biggest difference, but that doesn’t mean simple ideas can’t also push the envelope.
Case in point: Research teams with a balanced number of men and women have had a significantly higher likelihood of producing more innovative and impactful work compared with their unbalanced counterparts.
That’s according to a study from researchers at Michigan State University, Northwestern University, New York University and the University of Notre Dame, published Aug. 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“This work quantifies the impact that diversity has on academic achievement,” said MSU Provost Teresa K. Woodruff, Ph.D., who is an author of the new report.
Woodruff is also executive vice president for academic affairs at MSU, as well as an MSU Foundation Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology.
“The more diverse the environment, the better the outcome for those who fund the research and those in whose interest the work is done," Woodruff said.
“These are interesting and important findings, not only for recognizing the contributions of women in science — and women and men working together — but also for improving science,” said Brian Uzzi, the senior author of the study and the Richard L. Thomas Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.
“Chances are, if we had more mixed-gender teams working on pressing issues, we'd have faster breakthroughs,” he said.
In addition to Woodruff and Uzzi, authors of the study include Tanya Y. Tian of New York University; Benjamin F. Jones of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management; and Yang Yang, who was with the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems before joining the University of Notre Dame.
‘Diversity drives innovation’
In its study, the team evaluated millions of scientific papers published since the year 2000 in 45 different medical research subfields with an eye toward two key metrics: one was novelty, or the degree to which a paper combined existing ideas in innovative ways; the other was impact, measured by a paper’s total number of citations.
Using an algorithm to infer the gender of the authors from their names, the researchers also found the gender ratio of each paper’s authorship team. With their approach, the researchers said that an important limitation was that they could not account for nonbinary authors.
Taking that limitation and other variables into account, the researchers were still able to conclusively show that mixed-gender teams produced work that significantly surpassed the average in terms of novelty and impact.
Furthermore, teams that had an equal number of men and women — or close to it — had the highest likelihood of novel and impactful results. Gender-balanced teams with six or more members were nearly 10% more likely to publish novel work than the base rate, and almost 15% more likely to be among the most highly cited papers.
The conclusions held in all 45 medical subfields the team studied, and the strengths of mixed-gender teams were apparent whether teams were led by a man or a woman. Preliminary work published with the report also indicates that the team’s findings are generalizable across scientific disciplines beyond medicine.
Although these results are striking, Woodruff was not surprised by what she and her colleagues found. She has previously collaborated with Uzzi and other researchers on several projects involving gender and visibility in the sciences. They’ve shown, for instance, that certain grants are disproportionately smaller for women than men and that scientific prizes provide less money and prestige for women than men, she said.
“The ability to do these kinds of big data studies provides a prismatic view on the ways we understand success in the sciences and ways to work toward bigger impact,” Woodruff said. “We all believe that diversity increases impact, and this new paper proves that statement, here through the lens of gender and scientific productivity.”
MSU Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer Jabbar R. Bennett, Ph.D., who earned his doctorate in biomedical sciences, echoed this sentiment.
“These findings support and expand what we know anecdotally about the value of diverse teams in search of answers to challenging questions both within and beyond the laboratory,” said Bennett, who is also a professor in the College of Human Medicine. “Diversity drives innovation and excellence in scientific research, and accelerates the pathway toward discovery.”
The team is the first to quantify the benefits of mixed-gender research teams in this way. Although the report does not delve into the reasons underlying the benefits, previous research offers insights.
Diverse teams “utilize innovative and nuanced approaches to problem-solving, often informed by personal experience and through an equity lens,” Bennett said. “Intentionality makes all the difference.”
Northwestern’s Uzzi said teams with an equal gender balance may achieve a “‘Goldilocks level’ of divergent thinking balanced by communication processes that promote listening to and building off of each other’s ideas.”
The team’s analysis does show that research teams have trended toward a more equal gender balance over the past two decades. Yet teams still usually have more men and fewer women than would be expected by putting together a team at random. That means there’s a fairly straightforward step that most research teams can take as they try to push their work to new levels of impact and innovation.
“Collaborating with more diversity in your team can lead to higher impact,” Woodruff said. “I encourage everyone, in all disciplines, to see how diversity is a key to academic success and excellence.”
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JOURNAL
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
DOI
How more female executives in the C-suite can spur improved customer orientation and financial performance
News from the Journal of Marketing
Peer-Reviewed PublicationResearchers from St. Edward’s University, University of Mississippi, and University of Texas at Austin published a new Journal of Marketing study that examines the relationship between female leadership and customer orientation and the resulting effect on firm financial performance.
The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled “Customer Orientation and Financial Performance: Women in Top Management Teams Matter!” and is authored by Chandra Srivastava, Saim Kashmiri, and Vijay Mahajan.
When Mary Barra was appointed the first female CEO of General Motors in 2014, the company had recently declared bankruptcy, was under fire for an ignition-switch product recall that had led to customer deaths, and had seen a slowdown in U.S. sales due to changing consumer preferences. Investors, employees, and analysts debated if (and how) Barra could change GM’s strategic approach. One of Barra’s early moves was to hire a set of female leaders and get her team to focus on “incorporating the voice of the customer in everything we do.” GM codified customer orientation into its vision statement and made customer-centric decisions such as creating a foundation to compensate customers who suffered ignition switch problems and initiating a massive U.S. shift from sedans to more popular sport utility vehicles.
Barra’s strategic vision, and the subsequent change in the strategic and financial trajectory of the company, raises an important question: How do female executives influence the strategic orientation of the firm? Barra admitted she benefitted from the support and expertise of women such as Alicia Boler-Davis (EVP) and Dhivya Suryadevara (CFO) and it is vital to explore the collective influence of these women on the firm’s decisions. This topic is especially relevant in the current social context where there is a greater push for gender equality and laws requiring firms to have women on the board of directors.
In this new study, the researchers examine 389 Fortune 500 firms over six years and find that female executives are likely to focus on customer relationships to a greater degree than their male counterparts and thus encourage more customer-oriented discussions in the C-suite. Consequently, the entire team is more likely to make strategic choices that reflect a growing focus on customers, which in turn accounts for more than half of the positive link between female influence in the C-suite and long-term financial performance.
However, the findings are not uniform across all firms. The relationship between female leadership and customer orientation is reduced by 17% in industries characterized by unpredictable customer preferences, fast-paced technological changes, and strong competitive forces and is reduced by 25% in firms with a high degree of ownership by the founding family. The effect of female leadership on customer orientation is increased by 137% in industries where the C-suite has a high degree of control over firm strategy, is increased by 80% for firms with high female representation on the board, and is increased by 89% for firms with marketing-experienced directors on the board.
As Srivastava explains, “In effect, companies that operate in relatively stable environments, are not family-owned, have female and marketing-experienced board members, and whose executives have more latitude to decide firm strategy are best suited to unlock the benefits of female leadership. The relatively unregulated nature of their industries offers strategic and tactical freedom. Thus, the inclusion of female executives may provide a ‘turnaround’ strategy for these firms, helping them instill and benefit from a greater customer orientation.”
Earlier studies posit that female executives engage in reduced risk-taking across a variety of business contexts, creating the impression that female executives are conservative and risk-averse in all areas. Kashmiri says that “Managers should reject this stereotype and consider that customer orientation may actually result in female executives pursuing riskier strategies in some situations in order to satisfy customers.”
“CEOs and boards should consider if their organizations could benefit from a greater gender balance in the C-suite to facilitate customer orientation, thus leading to greater shareholder value. Even if there are only a few female executives on the top management team, companies can strengthen the relationship between these female executives and customer orientation by adding female directors and marketing-experienced board members to support customer-centric strategies,” says Mahajan. If members of the top management team are predominantly male, they can make conscious efforts to counteract the tendency to under-value customers.
A note of caution: Hiring more female executives will not always lead to superior financial returns. An entirely female top management team suffers from the same issues of gender imbalance – more homogenous perspectives and groupthink– as an entirely male top management team. CEOs must find the gender balance in their top management teams that facilitates an appropriate strategic orientation for their firms.
Full article and author contact information available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/00222429221120419
About the Journal of Marketing
The Journal of Marketing develops and disseminates knowledge about real-world marketing questions useful to scholars, educators, managers, policy makers, consumers, and other societal stakeholders around the world. Published by the American Marketing Association since its founding in 1936, JM has played a significant role in shaping the content and boundaries of the marketing discipline. Shrihari Sridhar (Joe Foster ’56 Chair in Business Leadership, Professor of Marketing at Mays Business School, Texas A&M University) serves as the current Editor in Chief.
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JOURNAL
Journal of Marketing
ARTICLE TITLE
Customer Orientation and Financial Performance: Women in Top Management Teams Matter!
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