Butchers, Bakers, and Barcharts: How Digitized Information Affects Gender Differences in Performance

Date: 

Wednesday, October 17, 2018, 4:00pm to 5:30pm

Location: 

William James Hall 1550

Alexandra Feldberg, Ph.D. Candidate, Organizational Behavior, Harvard University

This study asks: does increased access to digitized information affect the performance of men and women workers differently? I find that the availability of information in digital platforms disproportionately improves women’s performance in a male-dominated organization. I theorize that digitized information helps women by serving as a “relationship substitute,” an alternative channel to traditional relationship networks through which peripheral group members can gain access to performance-enhancing information. Using interviews, observations, and archival data, I take advantage of an intervention occurring within a 100-store grocery chain—when it introduced a weekly online report providing managers with a high-level summary of their departments’ performance along key metrics. Comparing sales across 152 departments twelve weeks prior to and following the report’s implementation shows that women managers benefit disproportionately from the report’s introduction but stronger network ties with peers and supervisors attenuate its benefits. Findings offer new directions for research on gender inequality and knowledge transfer by suggesting that digital channels of knowledge distribution can offset disparities arising from relationship networks in organizations.