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Study: Women Outperform Men in Supply Chain Collaboration

New research points to the importance of adding more women to the supply chain workforce.

The results of a new study suggest that women are better-suited than men when it comes to collaborating on supply chain issues.

A new research study from the University of Akron used a “production decision experiment featuring asymmetric information and asymmetric risk sharing.”

The authors of the study’s resulting research article reported the following key findings:

  • First, women are more collaborative than men in the role of both buying agents and supply agents.
  • Second, information about counterparts’ gender affects behaviors, since both genders are more collaborative when paired with women than when paired with men.
  • Finally, all-women supply chain pairs outperformed all other gender pairings in supply chain efficiency. 

The authors said the results suggest women “exhibit an advantage over men in supply chain collaboration, and that employing women is advantageous irrespective of gender diversity concerns.”

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