Hierarchy and opportunism in teams

Eline van der Heijden (), Jan Potters and Martin Sefton

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2009, vol. 69, issue 1, 39-50

Abstract: We use an experiment to compare two institutions for allocating the proceeds of team production. Under revenue-sharing, each team member receives an equal share of team output; under leader-determined shares, a team leader has the power to implement her own allocation. Both arrangements are vulnerable to opportunistic incentives: under revenue-sharing team members have an incentive to free ride, while under leader-determined shares leaders have an incentive to seize team output. We find that most leaders forego the temptation to appropriate team output and manage to curtail free riding. As a result, compared to revenue-sharing, the presence of a team leader results in a significant improvement in team performance.

Keywords: Leadership; Team; production; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (43)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167-2681(08)00184-4
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Hierarchy and Opportunism in Teams (2006)
Working Paper: Hierarchy and Opportunism in Teams (2005)
Working Paper: Hierarchy and Opportunism in Teams (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:69:y:2009:i:1:p:39-50

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().