“梅须逊雪三分白,雪却输梅一段香”——性别平衡、性别观念与企业创新

The Plum Is Not So White as Snow, But More Fragrant than It: Gender Diversity, Gender Conception, and Enterprise Innovation

随着越来越多女性跻身于男性占主导地位的创新活动之中,性别平衡如何影响企业创新绩效这一话题逐渐引发关注和热议。本文综合采用2011—2013年中国微观企业创新调查等多个数据库,考察企业内科技人员性别平衡指数对专利申请的影响,性别观念对性别平衡创新效应的调节作用,以及异性合作如何影响个体的工作表现。研究发现:首先,性别平衡指数每提高1个百分点,企业专利申请增加0.2%,这一结果在一系列稳健性检验后依然成立。其次,传统性别观念是制约女性发挥创新效应不可忽视的调节因素,即性别歧视越严重的地区,性别平衡对专利申请的促进效应越弱。再次,与异性合作越多的个体其社会交换取向、尤其是声誉回报等广义交换取向得分越高,且其在工作中的表现更好。因此,本文有助于学界从性别平衡和性别观念的角度深入理解企业创新的内在规律。

With more and more women among the male-dominated innovation activities, the topic of how gender diversity in scientific and technical personnel affects enterprise innovation performance has gradually attracted attention and hot debates. This paper uses multiple data sources to examine the impact of gender diversity index of scientific and technological personnel on patent applications, as well as the impact of gender perception on gender diversity’s innovation effect and how heterosexual cooperation affects individual work performance. It finds that: first, given other factors, a 1 percentage point increase in gender diversity is associated with a 0.2% increase in enterprise patent applications, a result that still holds after a series of robustness checks. Second, traditional gender perception remains a non-negligible constraint on women’s innovation role, as shown by the weaker effect of gender diversity on patent applications in regions with more severe gender discrimination. Third, the more individuals cooperate with the opposite sex, the higher their scores on social exchange orientation, especially on generalized exchange orientations such as rewarding reputation;and the higher the corresponding scores, the better the relative performance of individuals at work.In short, this paper is helpful for understanding the internal rule of enterprise innovation from the perspective of gender diversity and gender conception.