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Team formation with complementary skills

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  • Mürüvvet Büyükboyaci
  • Andrea Robbett

Abstract

One explanation for the prevalence of self‐managed work teams is that they enable workers with complementary skills to specialize in the tasks they do best, a benefit that may be enhanced if workers can sort themselves into teams. To assess this explanation, we design a real‐effort experiment to study the endogenous formation of teams, and its effect on productivity, when specialization either is or is not feasible. We find a strong positive interaction between endogenous team formation and the ability to specialize, indicating that endogenous team formation is a particularly effective mechanism for promoting team output in production environments that enable the exploitation of skill complementarities.

Suggested Citation

  • Mürüvvet Büyükboyaci & Andrea Robbett, 2019. "Team formation with complementary skills," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(4), pages 713-733, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jemstr:v:28:y:2019:i:4:p:713-733
    DOI: 10.1111/jems.12296
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    Cited by:

    1. Gjedrem, William Gilje & Kvaløy, Ola, 2020. "Relative performance feedback to teams," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
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    3. Mira Fischer & Rainer Michael Rilke & B. Burcin Yurtoglu, 2023. "When, and why, do teams benefit from self-selection?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 26(4), pages 749-774, September.
    4. Dar'io Blanco-Fern'andez & Stephan Leitner & Alexandra Rausch, 2022. "Dynamic groups in complex task environments: To change or not to change a winning team?," Papers 2203.09157, arXiv.org.

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