A Matter of Balance: Specialization, Task Variety, and Individual Learning in a Software Maintenance Environment

Sriram Narayanan (), Sridhar Balasubramanian () and Jayashankar M. Swaminathan ()
Additional contact information
Sriram Narayanan: Eli Broad School of Business, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824
Sridhar Balasubramanian: Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599
Jayashankar M. Swaminathan: Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599

Management Science, 2009, vol. 55, issue 11, 1861-1876

Abstract: Specialization at work has been recognized as a key driver of learning and productivity since the days of Adam Smith. More recently, researchers have noted that exposure to task variety can enhance learning. We examine how exposure to specialization and variety jointly drive employee productivity in a real-life setting. We analyze a data set covering 88 individuals who worked on 5,711 maintenance tasks in an offshore software support services operation. We find that, as expected, specialization enhances productivity. However, exposure to variety has a nonlinear influence on productivity; i.e., "too much variety" can impede learning. We also find that achieving a proper balance between specialization and exposure to a variety leads to the highest productivity. We capture this balance using an adaptation of the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index from the economics literature. In addition, we examine how the productivity of individuals in a workgroup is affected by member entry and exit, with the latter specified in terms of the degree of specialized experience and the degree of variety experience lost from the workgroup when a member exits. Our analysis reveals that the degree of variety experience lost has a greater impact on productivity than the degree of specialized experience that is lost.

Keywords: project management; organizational studies; productivity; effectiveness-performance; information systems; IT policy and management; outsourcing; learning and productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (63)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1090.1057 (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:inm:ormnsc:v:55:y:2009:i:11:p:1861-1876

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().