Extemporaneous Coordination in Specialist Teams: The Familiarity Complementarity

Kenny Ching (), Enrico Forti () and Evan Rawley ()
Additional contact information
Kenny Ching: Foisie School of Business, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Massachusetts 01609
Enrico Forti: UCL School of Management, University College London, London, E14 5AB, United Kingdom; O'Malley School of Business, Manhattan College, New York, New York 10471; Columbia University, Columbia Business School, New York, New York 10027
Evan Rawley: University of Connecticut Stamford Campus, Stamford, Connecticut 06901

Organization Science, 2021, vol. 32, issue 1, 1-17

Abstract: Team production is ubiquitous in the economy, but managing teams effectively remains a challenge for many organizations. This paper studies how familiarity among teammates influences the performance of specialist teams, relative to nonspecialist teams. Applying theories of team production to contexts where team members coordinate interdependent activities extemporaneously, we develop predictions about factors that shift the marginal returns to specialization along two dimensions of familiarity: social familiarity and functional familiarity. We test our hypotheses in the context of Defence of the Ancients 2 (DOTA2), a major e-sports game where, in some formats, players are exogenously assigned to five-person teams. After analyzing nearly 6.5 million matches, we find that specialist teams are relatively more successful when members are more socially and functionally familiar with one another. The results suggest that the plug-and-play perspective on specialist teams is incomplete; rather, specialization and familiarity are complements in dynamic environments where team members coordinate extemporaneously. Funded: Financial support from the UCL School of Management and Worcester Polytechnic Institute is gratefully acknowledged.

Keywords: organization; familiarity; specialists; teams; performance; e-sports (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2020.1376 (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:ororsc:v:32:y:2021:i:1:p:1-17

Access Statistics for this article

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