Document Type
Thesis
First Faculty Advisor
Michael Roberto
Second Faculty Advisor
Lori Coakley
Keywords
gender; devil's advocacy; decision making; teams; hidden profiles
Publisher
Bryant University
Rights Management
CC-BY
Abstract
Research shows that having a devil’s advocate improves a team’s decision-making quality. This finding has been proven to hold even under a hidden profile condition, where information is shared unequally among the members. Teams with asymmetric information are more likely to combine unshared information leading to superior decision-making when a team member plays the devil’s advocate. This experimental study aims to examine whether the gender of the devil’s advocate in a three-person team affects the team’s ability to succeed in a hidden profile condition challenge. This study utilizes experimental research to observe the effect of the gender of the devil’s advocate on the team’s decision-making quality. The findings of this experimental study pertaining to its original research question inquiring whether the gender of the devil’s advocate affects a team’s ability to succeed in a hidden profile condition challenge were not significant. However, our experimental study’s main finding suggests female majority teams outperformed male majority teams in this activity. This experimental study, in addition to future experiments exploring this notion further, might contribute to the literature evidence supporting more women participating in decision-making teams.
