Si dijéramos, como el histórico ejecutivo Jack Welch, que «si no tienes una ventaja competitiva, no compitas», ¿pensaríamos que esa frase es más propia de un hombre o de una mujer? Y si dijéramos, como una de las enseñanzas Zen Shin, que una flor no compite con la que tiene al lado, sino que simplemente florece, ¿sería una frase más propia de hombre o de mujer?
Prejuicios aparte, una reciente investigación de la reconocida Escuela de Negocios de Londres ha concluido que los pensamientos que podamos tener a priori al respecto son correctos. Pero no por una cuestión de fortalezas o sensibilidades (de ahí que sea relevante reseñar lo de «prejuicios aparte»), sino por las respuestas proporcionadas por un grupo de estudio para determinar las afinidades por géneros con los conceptos de competencia y competitividad.
The overall conclusion of the research is that men are more likely than women to find positive factors in competing, in the sense that competing has a better impact on professional activities and performance. What is interesting about the study is that it does not stop to identify the reasons for these differences. What is more relevant is the method used to identify the affiliation or non-affiliation of men and women in relation to what it means to compete.
The Business London School authors posed open-ended questions to 119 women and 111 men about competition, asking them to describe its positive and negative aspects. They then condensed all the responses into three groups of recurring themes, which they minimally developed into formulations that address each of these positive and negative aspects. Finally, a group of 2,331 people (49% women and 51% men) were asked to respond to these questions on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being strongly disagree, 7 being strongly agree and 4 being neither agree nor disagree.
As a result of this survey, it was found that 6 out of 10 women (63%) were less convinced than the average man about the positive impact of competition on performance, character development and the generation of innovative solutions. Even without strong gender differences, the data seems to suggest that men see more positive aspects of competing.
The researchers decided to tighten the screws on the study and added a vector: respondents were invited to participate in a study in exchange for a bonus. To do so, they would have to choose whether this bonus would be based on competitive performance, i.e. against others; or on absolute performance, i.e. independent of others. To put it another way: a competitive advantage or... a flower that blooms without competing with another flower. Which collective opted in greater numbers for the former? Indeed, 36% of men decided, compared to 21% of women, that this bonus should have a competitive basis. According to the conclusions of the study's authors, this is consistent: if men on average see more benefits in competing, it is also logical that on average they prefer competitive options.
«Nuestros hallazgos -expone uno de los autores, el profesor asociado de comportamiento organizacional Selin Kesebir- también apuntan a una serie de preguntas para futuros estudios. ¿Cómo llegan las personas a sus creencias sobre la competitividad? ¿Se transmiten a través de compañeros, de padres, de escuelas o de la cultura popular? ¿La experiencia temprana en deportes competitivos inculca creencias más positivas sobre la competencia? ¿Son las mujeres más pesimistas sobre el lado positivo de la competencia porque de hecho experimentan la competencia de manera diferente? Comprender estos factores desencadenantes puede ayudarnos a diseñar mensajes más efectivos en torno a la competencia«.
What we are sure of at BRAINTRUST, however, is that without intelligence, there is no worthwhile competition. That's why we love competitive intelligence. And that's why we engage men and women equally in our projects. To get the best vision of each one about the fact of competing, inherent to the market.
Incidentally, this is not the first time that studies that cross competitiveness and gender have been addressed. The post on HBR where Kesebir presents his research cites several very detailed papers on the subject, such as this one from the Oxford Quarterly Journal of Economics, this one from the American Journal of Political Science, or this one from the US National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
Image by Kerri Shaver on Unsplash
