Gender Composition of Tactical Decision Making Teams; Impact on Team Process and Outcome.

Abstract

Abstract : This study investigates the performance of teams differing in gender composition on a university-developed synthetic task, the Team Interactive Decision Exercise for Teams Incorporating Distributed Expertise (TIDE2). It was predicted that teams of varying gender configuration would differ in communication and coordination patterns, team process, and outcome measures. Gender configuration of teams was manipulated using six unique gender configurations. Predictions relating gender configuration to team effectiveness were made within the theoretical framework of the Multi-level theory (MLT) of team performance (Hollenbeck et al., 1995), because of the hierarchical, distributed structure of the team decision task. Results demonstrated significant differences in performance among the gender groups, with all-male teams performing most accurately, and teams with a male leader and two female subordinates performing least accurately. This variance in team performance was found to be due to differences in efficiency/effectiveness of information exchange, such that team members of low-performing teams did not acquire requisite information for decision making. In addition, it was demonstrated that measures of gender configuration which have been commonly used provided misleading results, which may explain the conflicting results reported in the past. The MLT theoretical propositions were tested and supported.