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You Can’t Put Old Wine in New Bottles: The Effect of Newcomers on Coordination in Groups

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  • McCarter, Matthew
  • Sheremeta, Roman

Abstract

A common finding in social sciences is that member change hinders group functioning and performance. However, questions remain as to why member change negatively affects group performance and what are some ways to alleviate the negative effects of member change on performance? To answer these questions we conduct an experiment in which we investigate the effect of newcomers on a group’s ability to coordinate efficiently. Participants play a coordination game in a four-person group for the first part of the experiment, and then two members of the group are replaced with new participants, and the newly formed group plays the game for the second part of the experiment. Our results show that the arrival of newcomers decreases trust among group members and this decrease in trust negatively affects group performance. Knowing the performance history of the arriving newcomers mitigates the negative effect of their arrival, but only when newcomers also know the oldtimers performance history. Surprisingly, in groups that performed poorly prior to the newcomers’ arrival, the distrust generated by newcomers is mainly between oldtimers about each other rather than about the newcomers.

Suggested Citation

  • McCarter, Matthew & Sheremeta, Roman, 2013. "You Can’t Put Old Wine in New Bottles: The Effect of Newcomers on Coordination in Groups," MPRA Paper 43532, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:43532
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    Cited by:

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    2. Matthew McCarter & Anya Samek & Roman Sheremeta, 2013. "Divided Loyalties or Conditional Cooperation? An Experimental Study of Contributions to Multiple Public Goods," Artefactual Field Experiments 00425, The Field Experiments Website.
    3. Roman M. Sheremeta, 2018. "Behavior In Group Contests: A Review Of Experimental Research," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 683-704, July.
    4. Sheremeta, Roman & Smith, Vernon, 2017. "The Impact of the Reformation on the Economic Development of Western Europe," MPRA Paper 87220, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Grund, Christian & Harbring, Christine & Thommes, Kirsten, 2018. "Group (Re-) formation in public good games: The tale of the bad apple?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 306-319.
    6. Christian Grund & Christine Harbring & Kirsten Thommes & Katja Rebecca Tilkes, 2020. "Decisions on Extending Group Membership—Evidence from a Public Good Experiment," Games, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-27, December.
    7. Castellani, Davide & Perri, Alessandra & Scalera, Vittoria G., 2022. "Knowledge integration in multinational enterprises: The role of inventors crossing national and organizational boundaries," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 57(3).
    8. Pablo Brañas-Garza & Jaromír Kovářík & Levent Neyse, 2013. "Second-to-Fourth Digit Ratio Has a Non-Monotonic Impact on Altruism," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(4), pages 1-10, April.
    9. Fehr, Dietmar, 2017. "Costly communication and learning from failure in organizational coordination," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 106-122.
    10. Chang, Daphne & Chen, Roy & Krupka, Erin, 2019. "Rhetoric matters: A social norms explanation for the anomaly of framing," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 158-178.
    11. Kasper Otten & Ulrich J. Frey & Vincent Buskens & Wojtek Przepiorka & Naomi Ellemers, 2022. "Human cooperation in changing groups in a large-scale public goods game," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-11, December.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    coordination; group performance; oldtimers; newcomers; trust; experiments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior

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