Our understanding of the link between women managers and firm-level innovation remains incomplete. Building on recent research on gender and leadership styles, we argue that there is a positive association between women managers and firm innovation. We highlight the selection process of women managers as an important underlying mechanism and discuss institutional and environmental contingencies as factors that influence this association. Specifically, we theorize and garner empirical support for the idea that in countries with legislation that promotes legally-mandated gender quotas, underqualified women may be selected for management positions, whereas in countries with voluntary gender quotas (or quotas are entirely absent), women are predominantly selected on the basis of their qualifications. The association between women and innovation is strengthened (weakened) in the latter (former) case. We also argue that this positive relationship is stronger under conditions of environmental complexity, which typically characterize innovation activities. These predictions are supported on the basis of data from the Management, Organization and Innovation (MOI) survey which covers manufacturing firms in twelve countries.

我们对女性管理者与公司层面创新之间联系的理解仍然不完整。基于最近关于性别和领导风格的研究，我们认为女性管理者与公司创新之间存在正相关。我们强调女性管理者的选择过程是一个重要的潜在机制，并讨论了制度和环境突发事件作为影响这种关联的因素。具体而言，我们对以下观点进行理论化并获得实证支持：在立法促进法律规定的性别配额的国家，可能会选择不合格的女性担任管理职位，而在自愿性别配额（或完全没有配额）的国家，女性被选为管理职位。主要是根据他们的资格来选择的。在后一种（前一种）情况下，女性与创新之间的联系得到加强（减弱）。我们还认为，在环境复杂性（通常是创新活动的特征）的条件下，这种正相关关系会更强。这些预测得到了管理、组织和创新 (MOI) 调查数据的支持，该调查涵盖了 12 个国家的制造公司。