The Quantity-Quality Tradeoff: How Incentives and Monitoring Shape Gender Differences at Work

Why do women and men approach the same work differently? Prior research across occupations shows that men tend to emphasize quantity and produce more, whereas women prioritize quality. Researchers have attributed these differences to individual-level factors, such as gender-specific preferences, caregiving responsibilities, and evaluator biases. We propose that organizational practices, specifically production incentives and quality monitoring, also influence these patterns. Using data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), we conceptualize the quantity-quality tradeoff using examiner leniency and leverage discontinuities in incentives and monitoring to assess their effects. We theorize and find that stronger production incentives lead men to be more lenient than women, prioritizing quantity. Under heightened monitoring, women are less lenient than men, emphasizing quality. Further, monitoring moderates the relationship between incentives and gender differences in leniency such that the largest gender gap occurs under strong incentives and weak monitoring. Our study demonstrates that organizational practices interact with worker gender to shape the quantity-quality tradeoff, indicating that incentive and monitoring systems—though not designed to affect gender inequality—produce distinct and unintended effects that are essential to understanding and addressing workplace disparities.

Funding: We greatly appreciate funding support from the Gender & Work Initiative at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School.

Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.17754.