A problem of a shortage of female managers or a problem of a surplus of male managers? An experiment on the effects of framing on stock-flow failure

摘要

This paper aims to add knowledge about solving stock-flow tasks, in particular in the field of personnel policies, by studying the effect of differences in framing of such a task on performance of subjects Framing is the effect that the formulation of a problem has on ones understanding of and actions towards that problem. Participants in a system dynamics inventory task seem to react differently to a problem when it is formulated in different ways, which in turn might have an effect on the degree of stock-flow failure of the participant. Participants had to perform a variation of the Female Professors task, namely a managers task from a male perspective and a managers task from a female perspective, in which the question asked was the same but the frame of the tasks differed. It appeared that the participants with the managers task from the male perspective recommended on average more extreme numbers in their reasoning than the participants with the managers task from the female perspective. There was no difference in stock-flow failure between the two groups of participants.