Team size and diversity

Brais Álvarez Pereira, Shan Aman-Rana () and Alexia Delfino

NOVAFRICA Working Paper Series from Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics, NOVAFRICA

Abstract: We analyse the relationship of performance with team diversity and size. We first propose a model with knowledge spillovers in production, which predicts that the effect of team diversity on individual performance increases with team size. We experimentally test the model by randomly assigning students to solve knowledge questions in teams of different sizes, with or without diversity. Our main finding is that the benefit of diversity is increasing in team size. We further show that such benefit is heterogeneous depending on students’ gender and the gender composition of teams. This has implications for how organizations can design their teams to maximize knowledge flows and performance.

Keywords: Gender; Diversity; Team performance; Information; Communication (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 J15 J16 M50 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-ure
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Related works:
Journal Article: Team size and diversity (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:unl:novafr:wp2301

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