Author :
- Taryn Machado Senez, LCDR Brazilian Navy, Inter-American Defense Board.
- Carlos Meier Hoyuela, Col Chilean Air Force, Inter-American Defense Board.
Abstract
This work addresses the relevance of gender in the decision-making process among organizations. Studies have shown that, although the cognitive processing capacity between men and women does not present significant distinctions and, therefore, does not justify the disparity in female representation in spaces of power and decision, this point continues to evolve. However, recent research has demonstrated that the intrinsic factors of the decision-making process associated to gender, weight in. This does not imply an advantage of one gender over the other, but rather a set of characteristics that on themselves can suit a specific scenario, but are clearly beneficial to any organization, particularly when the organizational culture privilege the contribution of individuals to a team.
Introduction
In behavioral psychology, the study of the decision-making process and its existing distinct models guide the analysis of decision-making risk and its impacts in various organizational, economic and social spheres. In addition to bringing together several lines of theoretical thought, this process also encompasses multiple variables that affect the final decision, including the decision maker’s intrinsic characteristics and environment.
This paper will address how the individual decision-makers gender can affect the outcome of the process and contribute to significant organizational changes. From this analysis, the main aspects of the representation of the female gender in positions that demand such decision-making mechanisms will be considered, considering the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) that recognized an unbalanced women’s representativeness in power and decision-making.
The Beijing Declaration set out concrete actions to ensure women’s equality in power structures and develop women’s capacity to participate in decision-making processes and leadership. In addition, the document also defined the goal of «gender balance» in the decision-making process. Since then, UN Member States have made successive commitments to women’s leadership, recognizing that «women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life» is necessary to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Despite some advances in women’s formal political participation, women are still underrepresented in decision-making processes.
This article comprises two sections discussing the main points raised above. The first section will bring a theoretical outline on the main concepts, mechanisms and methods related to the decision-making process. The second section will outline an excerpt of the influence of the gender variable of the decision maker in this process. Thus, it will be possible to evaluate if and how gender influences the decision-making process, and with this, promoting a scenario that envisions systematic participation of women in all stages of the process, making it more representative. Moreover, taking advantage of a diverse environment of decision makers.
The Decision-Making Process – Theoretical Models
The mechanisms by which the decision-making is built are still widely debated, with various theories explaining this process and numerous variables influencing the final decision. Studying these mechanisms is of great value in the corporate and organizational environment since the decision-making process determines the entire chain of actions performed at the administrative levels below the managerial levels, that is, those who are responsible for decision-making.
Newell, Shaw and Simon (1958) began the studies of the psychological and behavioral mechanisms, developing a theory which describes the decision-maker’s behavior as informational processes that demand controls, both intrinsic and extrinsic. As can be assumed, extrinsic controls derive from the environment in which the individual is inserted, whether the physical or the social environment itself. An example of this can be the influence of a military environment over a military woman opposed to a civilian working environment for a civilian Woman. The latter, bases its decisions more in intuition, opposed to a military woman, who has a more rational decision making process.
Newell, Shaw and Simon (1958), also included on their findings that the influence of intrinsic factors such as background experiences, health conditions, among others, to a greater or lesser extent combine them with extrinsic factors to effect an action resulting from the cognitive decision-making process.
In general, this theory generated new lines of thought about this theme, but essentially is related to the decision-making process models that categorize it into more rational or intuitive levels. In the first case, the rational model is based on the objective identification of a problem, the elaboration of alternative solutions to an issue, the analysis of the feasibility of implementing these alternatives, the choice of one of them, its implementation and evaluation of the results (Schoenfeld, 2011).
According to the author, the rational process is the result of a thorough analysis of the risks and potential cost-benefit that each alternative presents to the organizational issue, consisting, therefore, of a logical sequence of systematically planned actions that can, depending on the analysis of the results shown, be re-executed in a new cycle of action (Shoenfeld, 2011).
However, this rationality-based model that comprises the choice of specific solutions to a problem does not consider the subjectivity involved in the behavioral design of the subject, that is, of the decision maker, as well as the context of the environment to which he is inserted. In this aspect, a model the Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon elaborated on was called Bounded Rationality Theory (Simon, 2000).
This model points out that it is essential to evaluate several factors inherent to the decision maker himself, such as his life experiences that determine previous knowledge about certain situations and relational processes of this knowledge with the environment in which they are inserted (Simon, 2000). The environment concept can be understood as organizational culture, individuals who make up the team of which this decision-maker is the leader, or even extrinsic factors, such as political, social or economic issues.
Kahneman (2003) also contributed significantly to the evolution of scientific thinking about decision-making processes. According to the author, there would not be a prevalence of solely rational mechanisms in the decision-making process but rather a dichotomization between rational and intuitive practice. Thus, the same individual could, depending on extrinsic factors, move between a more rational decision-making model, based on a system that requires a longer time of informational processing to establish a specific line of logical reasoning, to a more intuitive model, which represents the decisions made, for example, in moments of urgency, of risk, with a high degree of uncertainty and low precision.
In this way, one can conceptualize the decision-making process taking into account an organizational sphere where the decision is being taken, i.e. the environment as an extrinsic factor, or inherent to the work or institutional culture to which the individual is acting, as well as its intrinsic characteristics that represent its subjectivities. In summary, based on the main theoretical elements above, that the decision-making process is a multifactorial mechanism where different environments will permeate the same individual making him act in more rational or more intuitive way. One of these elements that can significantly affect the decision-making process is the gender of the individual, and this point will be discussed in the subsequent section of the present work.
The Role of Women in the Decision-Making Process
Klenke (2003), in her study, discusses the influence of numerous variables on the results presented by high-level teams from the decision-making process involved in the managerial scope. This study also reports findings that the gender role of the individual responsible for the final decisions remains inconclusive throughout the studies on this theme.
The author points out that gender could be a factor that contributes indirectly to the results presented much more so to social and political issues affected by power relations (Klenke, 2003). In short, more relevant than the gender per se, it will be the organizational structural relations of power built in the team or the institutional environment that would influence the results of the decisions made.
This, on the one hand, would be in line with the models proposed by the authors already mentioned, such as Newell, Shaw and Simon (1958), Simon (2000) or Kahneman (2003), who advocate a model that combines the influence of factors intrinsic and extrinsic to the individual. On the other hand, it is undeniable that the gender of the decision-maker is related to this concept of organizational power since women do not occupy this role among organizations, in an equivalent way of man do. According to Klenke (2003), power has become a gendered concept in organizations since gender is the primary field within which, or through which, power is articulated.
Cognitive tests were carried out by a Spanish group in 2007 to understand the influence of the gender of the individual performing a managerial function on the decision-making processes in an organization (Lizárraga, Baquedano & Cardelle-Elawar, 2007).
A key finding, on the scope of this article, is that women would be more focused on issues that generate doubts or uncertainties throughout the process and on the dynamism involved in the decision-making itself.
The authors also point out that women are more aware of the extrinsic processes that involve the action of solving a problem, including the scenario and all the people who work in it, performing a more comprehensive approach than men (Lizárraga, Baquedano & Cardelle-Elawar, 2007). On the other hand, men are more pragmatic in listing all the stages and possible paths to lead them to the final decision about a situation or problem, defining goals and routes more objectively and motivating themselves from the pressures of deadlines and urgencies.
However, the authors highlight that these differences presented are not due to any cognitive or self-regulatory distinctions, and both men and women process information indistinctly by retrieving data from their memories, and experiences to bring them to the decision-making process. Also, they can categorize these data logically and practically, envisioning solutions and alternatives to the problems that resulted from the analyzed tests (Lizárraga, Baquedano & Cardelle-Elawar, 2007).
Klenke (2003) has, therefore, a conceptual model by which gender differences structurally impact the decision-making process at the organizational level, either through the institutional constructions elaborated from the lower representation of women in positions of power, through the differences in styles in the management of managerial and labor conflicts and the level of trust exercised in their environment.
Lizárraga, Baquedano and Cardelle-Elawar (2007) point out that, in the same way that the decision-making process is based on issues that are related to cognitive, behavioral and environmental processes, considering the aspects intrinsic to the decision-making subject itself, its gender would also significantly affect the mechanisms and results, given the social issues inherent to this theme, especially values, beliefs and one’s personal experiences. Thus, corroborating the provisions of Klenke (2003), gender would be a factor that influences the decision-making process not per se but indirectly from the individual’s social construction from their experiences.
Considering the political outlines related to the agenda of promoting greater equality of female representation in the decision-making spheres of power, the Commission of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) noted the relevance of women’s involvement in public life for more representative results at the global level. In this regard, the data brought by the International Labor Organization in its recent 2023 report show, for example, that corporate profits can grow by up to 20% if there is a greater balance in the participation of women in positions of greater power (ILO, 2023).
Conclusions
When women and men do not have the same opportunities to influence policies and decisions, they are more likely to systematically favor the interests of those with the most influence and are less likely to address gender inequality and cause it to persist. The demand for parity is based on the fact that women are half the population and have their own interests and needs.
The researches mentioned above, demonstrate that there are no difference in the quality of the decisions made by a women or a man. However they differentiate between them due to intrinsic elements, giving them characteristics that complement a decision making process.
The quantitative representation of women’s is justified by the facts presented above. Women representation improves decision-making not by their gender, but by adding its particular characteristics to it.
This, of course complements the contribution of woman by adding a greater plurality of views. Organizations with diverse leaders and boards perform better and diverse teams are smarter at resolving problems. Equalizing gender representation in decision-making spheres is, therefore, closely related to the completeness and quality of decision-making in organizations.
Because organizations have already identified these needs and the value of diversity is finally being accepted, they have been promoting an expansion of power spaces for women, benefiting from the gender’s particularities, although there is still a long way to go in this process.
References
Commission of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Recomendação Geral No. 23: Vida política e pública. https://gddc.ministeriopublico.pt/sites/default/files/documentos/pdf/rec_geral_23_vida_politica_e_publica.pdf
International Labor Organization (ILO). (2023). ILO Brief: Spotlight on work statistics n° 12.https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—dgreports/—stat/documents/publication/wcms_870519.pdf
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