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The effect of teammate personality on team production

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  • Hancock, Stacey A.
  • Hill, Andrew J.

Abstract

Many goods and services are produced in teams. We explore how teammate personality traits impact productivity on joint team tasks. Studying student teams at a large university and considering the “Big Five” personality characteristics of extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness, we find that teammate conscientiousness has a small, positive impact on team performance: a one standard deviation increase in teammate conscientiousness increases performance on a team task by about three percent of a standard deviation in our preferred specification. The effect is evident holding teammate ability and gender fixed, and suggestively operates through improved team functioning and sustained increases in student effort. We also find evidence of positive spillovers from teammate openness and negative spillovers from teammate extroversion.

Suggested Citation

  • Hancock, Stacey A. & Hill, Andrew J., 2022. "The effect of teammate personality on team production," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:labeco:v:78:y:2022:i:c:s0927537122001385
    DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2022.102248
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    Cited by:

    1. Claudio Schilter & Samuel Luethi & Stefan C. Wolter, 2024. "Competitive Peers: The Way to Higher Paying Jobs?," Economics of Education Working Paper Series 0228, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
    2. Joseph Kuehn, 2023. "Adjusting for teammate effects in evaluating college prospects for the NBA draft," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 60(3), pages 295-314, December.
    3. Adamopoulou, Effrosyni & Cao, Yaming & Kaya, Ezgi, 2024. "Gritty Peers," IZA Discussion Papers 17446, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Personality traits; Peer effects; Team production;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

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