Further fodder for using randomness to make choices that are traditionally made by other, judgment-based methods:
“Women have to enter the leadership race to win: Using random selection to increase the supply of women into senior positions,” Amanda H. Goodall [pictured here] and Margit Osterloh, 2015. The authors, at Cass Business School, City University, London and the University of Zürich, explicitly build on the work of 2010 Ig Nobel management prize winners Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo:
“The supply of women into senior management has changed little despite well intentioned efforts. We argue that the biggest effect is from supply-side factors that inhibit females’ decision to enter competitions: Women are under-confident about winning, men are over-confident; women are more risk averse than men in some settings; and, most importantly, women shy away from competition. In order to change the conditions under which this is the case, this paper proposes a radical idea. It is to use a particular form of random selection of candidates to increase the supply of women into management positions. We argue that selective randomness would encourage women to enter tournaments; offer women ‘rejection insurance’; ensure equality over time; raise the standard of candidates; reduce homophily to improve diversity of people and ideas; and lessen ‘the chosen one’ factor. We also demonstrate, using Jensen’s inequality from applied mathematics, that random selection can improve organizational efficiency….
“Random processing, which includes screening to filter out inappropriate candidates, can in principle be used in many settings to correct and improve different kinds of procedures.18 Zeitoun, Osterloh and Frey (2014) propose developing a corporate governance model using random selection procedures to appoint stakeholder representatives to corporate boards. Pluchino, Rapisarda and Garofalo (2011) suggest using partial random selection as a promotion strategy that protects again the Peter Principle.”