March 08, 2018
10:00-11:00 a.m.
Please note: This event is for invited researchers only.
Title:
Men Check out, Women Pitch in: How Familiarity Influences Effort in Mixed-Gender Teams
Talk description:
We examine gender differences in individual contributions to team performance using data from a field experiment of 108 randomly assigned, mixed-gender teams working together to complete a project over several months. We find that men in mixed-gender teams are more likely than women to engage in social loafing (i.e. freeriding), while women are more likely to engage in social compensation (i.e. to increase effort in response to a teammate’s low effort). Next, we show that these patterns are exacerbated by feelings of familiarity for teammates of the opposite gender: men are more likely to loaf when they are familiar with a female teammate, and women tend to compensate more often when they are familiar with a male teammate. By describing how familiarity with opposite-gender teammates facilitates social loafing by men and social compensation by women, we provide a novel, relational perspective on gender dynamics in teams.
Biography:
Jose Uribe is an Assistant Professor in the Management and Organizations Department at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. His research focuses on the social dynamics affecting strategic outcomes for teams and organizations. He studies the performance implications of network structures, with special attention to those configurations that endow teams and organizations with a competitive advantage. He obtained his MBA and PhD from Columbia Business School, an MPP from Georgetown University and BA in Economics from McGill University.
Research is the heart of Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS), and we want to make sure that we support each other in developing high quality research. To that end, we created the Adderley Positive Research Incubator for sharing and encouraging POS-related research ideas that are at various stages of development.
Learn more about the Adderley Positive Research Incubator here and direct questions about individual sessions to Amy Young at baldwin@umich.edu.