Why Join a Team?

David J. Cooper (), Krista Saral and Marie Claire Villeval
Additional contact information
David J. Cooper: Department of Economics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306

Management Science, 2021, vol. 67, issue 11, 6980-6997

Abstract: We present experiments exploring why high ability workers join teams with less able coworkers when there are no short-term financial benefits. We distinguish between two explanations: prosocial 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 prosocial preferences. This result has important implications for the role of adverse selection in determining the productivity of teams.

Keywords: teams; teaching; revenue sharing; social preferences; self-selection; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2020.3817 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Why Join a Team? (2021)
Working Paper: Why Join a Team? (2019)
Working Paper: Why Join a Team? (2019)
Working Paper: Why Join a Team? (2019)
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:67:y:2021:i:11:p:6980-6997

Access Statistics for this article

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