Towards firm's value co-creation: Improving gender balance in management with competition to achieve goals

Despite empirical evidence has shown that having women in firm's decisionmaking positions is an important source of value co-creation, those positions are still largely male dominated. Previous research in experimental economics seems to suggest that women tend to shy away from competition. However, most of this research has focused on a particular competition type called “winner takes all” (WTA) competition, which have been found to interrelate to cultural and social variables. We present an economic laboratory experiment that compares the WTA competition to the independent competition to meet goals; the latter one not so interrelated to other influences such as self-confidence and/or fear of failure (risk/ambiguity attitudes). The results show that the number of women entering competitive environments is significantly higher in the independent competition to meet goals than in the WTA competition. Furthermore, this increase comes with no reduction in men’s participation and with no general efficiency reduction. Our findings suggest that firms should change the widespread used WTA competition in favor of the independent competition to meet goals in order to achieve value co-creation and sustainability through a gender neutral promotion mechanism. Additionally, this research contributes to reduce stereotypes towards competition preferences by gender.