The Impact of Teams on Output, Quality and Downtime: An Empirical Analysis Using Individual Panel Data

Derek Jones and Takao Kato

No 104-24, Working Papers from Department of Economics, Colgate University

Abstract: To investigate the size and the timing of the direct impact of participatory arrangements on business performance, we assemble and analyze extraordinary daily data-- for rejection, production and downtime rates for all operators in a single plant during a 35 month period, more than 77,000 observations. Consistent with core hypotheses that employee involvement enhances productivity and quality through mechanisms including employees becoming better motivated, more informed and paying greater attention to product details, we find that membership in offline teams: (i) initially enhances individual productivity by about 3%; (ii) and lowers rejection rates by about 27%. We also find that: (iii) these improvements are dissipated, typically at 10 to 16% per 100 days in a team; (iv) while initially teams lead to more downtime, these costs diminish over time; (v) the performance-enhancing effects of team membership are generally greater and more long-lasting for team members who are solicited by management; (vi) similar relationships exist for more educated team members. These findings square with diverse hypotheses concerning predicted gains from complementarities in organizational design, the benefits that flow from management solicitation and enhanced education, but are inconsistent with hypotheses based on Hawthorne effects.

JEL-codes: D20 J41 J50 M54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://digitalcollections.colgate.edu/islandora/object/islandora%253A4701 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Impact of Teams on Output, Quality, and Downtime: An Empirical Analysis Using Individual Panel Data (2011)
Working Paper: The Impact of Teams on Output, Quality and Downtime: An Empirical Analysis Using Individual Panel Data (2007)
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:cgt:wpaper:104-24

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Department of Economics, Colgate University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chad Sparber ().