Department of Business Administration, Radboud University Nijmegen, Gelderland, The Netherlands.
Department of Economics and Business Economics, Radboud University Nijmegen, Gelderland, The Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2019 Sep 18;14(9):e0222443. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0222443. eCollection 2019.
Gender diversity is known to have a positive effect on innovation in developed countries. However, it is unclear whether the benefits of gender diversity for innovation also apply to the particular context of developing countries, which is characterized by diverse and lower levels of gender equality. We propose that gender diversity positively impacts innovation in the developing countries participating in our study. In addition, we expect that this effect is moderated by country-specific levels of gender equality. In a cross-country study covering 18,547 firms in 15 developing countries, we find that gender diversity among a firm's owners and workforce as well as having a female top manager benefit innovation in developing countries. Yet, contradictory to our expectations, gender equality does not significantly moderate this relationship. As such, our results underline the importance of enabling and fostering gender diversity and have critical implications for firms and policy makers alike.
性别多样性已被证实对发达国家的创新具有积极影响。然而，性别多样性对创新的益处是否同样适用于发展中国家这一特殊背景尚不清楚，发展中国家的性别平等程度参差不齐且较低。我们提出，性别多样性会对参与我们研究的发展中国家的创新产生积极影响。此外，我们预计这种影响会受到各国性别平等水平的调节。在一项涵盖 15 个发展中国家的 18547 家企业的跨国研究中，我们发现企业所有者和员工中的性别多样性以及拥有女性最高管理层对发展中国家的创新有益。然而，与我们的预期相悖的是，性别平等并没有显著调节这种关系。因此，我们的研究结果强调了促进和培养性别多样性的重要性，对企业和政策制定者都具有重要意义。
