Females in corporate environments are perceived as being less task-oriented than men, but new research picks holes in the stereotype, writes Gabrielle Monaghan

Female-dominated teams co-operate better and are more likely to share knowledge with others than male-dominated teams even though women spend less time talking about the issues at hand, research has shown for the first time.

Lynda Gratton, professor of organisational behaviour at London Business School, led a study at the school's new Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business into how men and women lead and work in groups.

She examined the behaviour of 49 teams at 15 major companies, including the BBC, France Telecom, Nokia, Marriott International, and Royal Bank of Scotland.

The researchers set out to shed light on common assumptions, most of which are based on anecdote, about how women behave as leaders and within teams.

Women working in corporate environments are traditionally viewed as more emotional and better able to co-operate with each other than men, according to Gratton. They are believed to be more likely to focus on creating warm relationships with others but are less task-oriented than men, she said.

However, the new study challenged this stereotype and found it flawed.

The research, which is preliminary, revealed that groups led by women are likely to describe their leader as strong in forming relationships or creating a sense of co-operation and bringing people together, and also in designing tasks and holding people accountable for their performance in that task. Men can fulfil both roles but do so with less frequency, according to the findings.

In addition, female leaders are more likely to be co-operative than competitive when aiming for their goals at work.

"It could be said that women leaders tend to combine both 'masculine' and 'feminine' ways of working - their style is androgynous," according to the report.

"It is less common for their male counterparts to combine both masculine and feminine ways of working."

Female leaders are also more likely than men to encourage the sharing of knowledge within their team and across the organisation, the business school's research showed. In addition, women make more use of networking outside the confines of their working groups, building informal communities to share knowledge.

London Business School believes the research will prove particularly important when organisations are considering the composition and leadership of their departments and working groups.

"We raise the question of whether there is a cost to companies of having senior teams largely made up of and led by men," Gratton said.

"The cost could well be to organisations' capacity to maintain and build knowledge, to share and combine that knowledge and, most importantly, to innovate in their products and services."

Carly Fiorina, who was fired as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard last year, wrote in her memoir Tough Choices that choosing people is the most important choice a manager or leader can make. Looking back on her post at Hewlett-Packard, Fiorina reflected to journalists on her book tour last month that one of the mistakes she made at the tech giant was putting "the wrong people in wrong jobs, or leaving them in jobs for too long".

Gratton and her colleagues set about examining the behaviour of men and women in teams by examining established departments in the 15 organisations taking part in the study. These departments included human resources, customer services, finance, strategy, marketing, sales, and IT development.

A further seven teams were assembled for specific projects and were cross-departmental. Many of the teams were operating in several countries.

About two-thirds of the teams were led by men. The average age of the female leaders was 41 and the average age of the male leaders was 43.

The women led groups with an average of 37 members while the men's teams comprised an average of 51. The female-led teams had a higher proportion of women in them, at 52 per cent, while the figure for the male-led teams was 27 per cent. There was no obvious tendency in the teams studied for women to be in stereotypical "female" functions, the study pointed out.

The findings were released at an event in London this week held by the Lehman Brothers Centre for Women in Business, a joint initiative with London Business School dedicated to promoting women at all stages of their careers and assisting organisations to attract, retain and develop the broadest talent pool.

The centre was founded in January and was initiated by Laura Tyson, the outgoing dean of London Business School who served in Bill Clinton's first administration, and by Jeremy Isaacs, chief executive of the Europe and Asia division of investment bank Lehman Brothers.

The centre's mission is to be the pre-eminent hub of knowledge and best practice for women in business across Europe, bridging the worlds of academia and business through the development and dissemination of world-class research.

Its forum was set up to lead discussions on groundbreaking findings and to debate best practice on gender diversity in the business world. Along with the release of the study into men's and women's behaviour in teams, the centre also unveiled its first research programme on Wednesday.

As part of a wider research agenda, Gratton wants to respond to data which shows women failing to reach the highest echelons of corporate management in Europe. Whereas 50 per cent of the graduate recruits are female, the proportion reaching senior levels falls to 30 per cent and to just 15 per cent in executive roles.

"However, there are companies where women flourish at senior levels, and indeed European countries where the proportion of senior women is significantly higher," according to Gratton.

In a forthcoming study, she plans to identify the best practices that companies have developed to engage and inspire women to play significant roles in their organisations.

These will range from flexible working arrangements to enhanced career choice and the development of project-based working, the professor said. The outcome of the research will be a summary of best practices that the school will update on an annual basis.

At the moment, just 25 per cent of graduates of European business schools are women. London Business School has graduated more than 800 MBAs, Executive MBAs, Masters in Finance, Sloan Fellows and PhDs from more than 70 countries in the last year.

Its executive education department serves more than 6,000 executives on its programmes every year.