If we were to say, like the legendary executive Jack Welch, that "if you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete," would we think that phrase is more typical of a man or a woman? And if we were to say, like one of the Zen Shin teachings, that a flower does not compete with the one next to it, but simply blooms, would that phrase be more typical of a man or a woman?
Prejudices aside, recent research by the renowned London Business School has concluded that our initial thoughts on the matter are correct. However, this is not a question of strengths or sensitivities (hence the importance of "prejudices aside"), but rather the responses provided by a study group to determine gender affinities with the concepts of competence and competitiveness.
The overall conclusion of the research is that men are more likely than women to find positive factors in competition, in the sense that competition 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. The most relevant aspect is the method used to identify whether men and women agree or disagree on the meaning of competition.
The authors from the London Business School posed open-ended questions to 119 women and 111 men about competence, asking them to describe its positive and negative aspects. They then condensed all the responses into three groups of recurring themes, which they developed minimally into formulations that address each of these positive and negative aspects. Finally, they asked a group of 2,331 people (49% women and 51% men) to answer these questions on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being total disagreement, 7 being total agreement, and 4 being neither agreement nor disagreement.
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 competitiveness on performance, character development, and the generation of innovative solutions. Even without solid differences in terms of gender, the data seems to suggest that men see more positive aspects in 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 that 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 other flowers. Which group opted for the first option in greater numbers? Indeed, 36% of men decided that the bonus should be based on competition, compared to 21% of women. According to the conclusions of the study's authors, this is consistent: if men see more benefits in competing on average, it is also logical that they prefer competitive options on average.
"Our findings," explains one of the authors, associate professor of organizational behavior Selin Kesebir, " also point to a series of questions for future studies. How do people arrive at their beliefs about competitiveness? Are they transmitted through peers, parents, schools, or popular culture? Does early experience in competitive sports instill more positive beliefs about competition? Are women more pessimistic about the positive side of competition because they actually experience competition differently? Understanding these triggers can help us design more effective messages around competition."
In any case, what we are sure of at BRAINTRUST is that without intelligence, there is no worthwhile competition. That is why we love competitive intelligence. And that is why we involve both men and women equally in our projects. To obtain the best insight from each person on the subject of competition, which is inherent to the market.
Incidentally, this is not the first time that studies combining competitiveness and gender have been addressed. The HBR post in which Kesebir presents his research cites several very detailed documents on the subject, such as this one from Oxford's Quarterly Journal of Economics, this other one from the American Journal of Political Science, and this one from the US National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
Image by Kerri Shaver on Unsplash
