The Influence of Gender Differences on Decision-Making Effectiveness: A Systematic Literature Review of Evidence from Business Studies

Abstract

Corporate decision-making significantly impacts on organizational performance, governance processes, and sustainability efforts. There is growing attention of knowledge on gender's role in leadership and decision-making, but findings vary, showing mixed effects on decision quality and ethics. Thus, the originality lies in offering a synthesis across business disciplines to assess gendered decision-making in a contingency perspective, demonstrating not only the presence of differences, but also circumstances in which they may facilitate or limit effectiveness. The methodology used in this paper is systematic literature review using a sample of 50 publications published in the period of 2018 – 2025 in this context, following a thematic synthesis to consolidate evidence across different field of research. Findings show that gender variations in decision-making are apparent, but it is context dependent. Male leaders are more likely to be directive, risk-prone and performance oriented and on the other hand female leaders usually adopt participatory, risk-averse and ethical approach. Moreover, contextual factors such as industry type, cultural standards and organizational inclusivity significantly moderate results. The results highlight the need for organizations to move out of tokenistic representation, promoting the necessity to develop inclusive environments where gender diversity can be used as a major force. 

       Keywords: Gender diversity, Decision-making effectiveness, corporate governance, Leadership differences.