IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/labeco/v49y2017icp162-178.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Collaboration and free-riding in team contests

Author

Listed:
  • Büyükboyacı, Mürüvvet
  • Robbett, Andrea

Abstract

The organization of team contests can enhance productivity if teammates with complementary skills are able to allocate the team’s tasks efficiently, but can also suffer from free-riding incentives. We report the results of a real-effort experiment in which production requires the completion of two complementary tasks, at which workers have heterogeneous skills. We vary whether participants: compete individually; compete in teams where each member must complete each task; or compete in teams where the agents can divide tasks between them and potentially specialize in the task they do best. We report three main results. First, individuals who must work alone divide their work time in a way that is qualitatively consistent with the theoretical predictions, but allocate too little time to their weaker task. Second, there is no difference in productivity or free-riding behavior between individual contests and team contests where teammates cannot specialize. Finally, and most notably, when teammates can divide work tasks, they allocate more time to the tasks they are best at and experience a strong productivity gain. This is true even among teams that cannot communicate – despite the potential for coordination failure or coordination on Pareto dominated equilibria – but the effect is strongest when communication is available.

Suggested Citation

  • Büyükboyacı, Mürüvvet & Robbett, Andrea, 2017. "Collaboration and free-riding in team contests," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 162-178.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:49:y:2017:i:c:p:162-178
    DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2017.11.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927537116304018
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.labeco.2017.11.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mantilla, Cesar & Murad, Zahra, 2020. "Ego-relevance in team production," SocArXiv zy248, Center for Open Science.
    2. Mürüvvet Büyükboyaci & Andrea Robbett, 2019. "Team formation with complementary skills," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(4), pages 713-733, November.
    3. Jordi McKenzie & Paul Crosby & Liam J. A. Lenten, 2021. "It takes two, baby! Feature artist collaborations and streaming demand for music," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 45(3), pages 385-408, September.
    4. Huang, Lingbo & Murad, Zahra, 2021. "Fighting alone versus fighting for a team: An experiment on multiple pairwise contests," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 616-631.
    5. Gjedrem, William Gilje & Kvaløy, Ola, 2020. "Relative performance feedback to teams," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    6. Tugba Karabiyik & Aparajita Jaiswal & Paul Thomas & Alejandra J. Magana, 2020. "Understanding the Interactions between the Scrum Master and the Development Team: A Game-Theoretic Approach," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(9), pages 1-21, September.
    7. Hattori, Keisuke & Yamada, Mai, 2023. "Closing the Psychological Distance: The Effect of Social Interactions on Team Performance," MPRA Paper 117042, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Eric Mao, 2023. "The Incentive Effects of Tournaments and Peer Effects in Team Production: Evidence from Esports," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 24(2), pages 174-192, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Contest; Weakest-link technology; Comparative advantage; Coordination; Communication; Experiment; Team performance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • C71 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Cooperative Games
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:49:y:2017:i:c:p:162-178. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/labeco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.