Gender Demography and Organization Performance

Abstract

Considerable theoretical work has been published to date concerning the relationship between demographic composition of organizations and the performance of those firms. Indeed, under the topics of organization demography, substantial thought has been given to how demographic composition influences organization performance. Unfortunately, little empirical research has been conducted. The present research reports the results of two organization-level studies that investigated the relationship between gender diversity of organizations and their performance and hypothesized a nonlinear association. Study 1 results demonstrated support for an inverted U-shaped relationship between gender composition and organization performance, as hypothesized, and these results were constructively replicated in Study 2, thus increasing confidence in the validity of the findings. The results of Study 2 suggest that some industries might not be able to take advantage of this gender composition–firm performance relationship. Implications of these results for theory and research are discussed.