Management Accounting Section Midyear Meeting

Testosterone, Gender, and Importance Beliefs about Status Cues

• In Event: Performance Measurement III

Abstract

We use a sample of Swedish male and female subordinates in a single organization to test the link between blood testosterone concentration (TC) and importance beliefs about performance areas salient to their managers. In our setting females outnumber males in both junior and senior ranks, allowing us to test a biological gender difference in status-seeking behavior in a setting with a low possibility for social gender bias. We find that TC is associated with a greater importance belief about salient performance areas in male subordinates, but not in female, when there is no social gender bias against females in such beliefs. A majority of our results are robust against our control variables and suggest that in mixed-gender settings the effect of TC on status-sensitive decisions is limited to male subordinates.

Authors

• Lars Frimanson, Uppsala University

• Frank Hartmann, Erasmus University