Why join a team?

Cooper, David J., Saral, Krista and Villeval, Marie Claire (2021) Why join a team? Management Science, 67 (11). 6980–6997. ISSN 0025-1909

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Abstract

We present experiments exploring why high ability workers join teams with less able co-workers when there are no short-term financial benefits. We distinguish between two explanations: pro-social preferences and expected long-term financial gains from teaching future teammates. Participants perform a real-effort task and decide whether to work independently or join a two-person team. Treatments vary the payment scheme (piece rate or revenue sharing), whether teammates can communicate, and the role of teaching. High ability workers are more willing to join teams in the absence of revenue sharing and less willing to join teams when they cannot communicate. When communication is possible, the choice of high ability workers to join teams is driven by expected future financial gains from teaching rather than some variety of pro-social preferences. This result has important implications for the role of adverse selection in determining the productivity of teams.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	experiment,revenue sharing,self-selection,social preferences,teaching,teams,strategy and management,management science and operations research ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1400/1408
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Economics
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Behavioural Economics Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Sciences
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	08 Jun 2021 00:09
Last Modified:	20 Apr 2023 21:33
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/80215
DOI:	10.1287/mnsc.2020.3817

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