Individual learning and team functioning

This paper aims at studying the effects of learning - seen as a possible source of individual heterogeneity - on team functioning, in an experimental game requiring cooperation and coordination. It contributes to the new emergent cognitive approach to Economics. The empirical analysis starts from some general hypothesis but has mainly a descriptive purpose. Results allow confirming previous findings: individuals tend to developed high-routinized paths of behaviour, extending the strategies learned in the past, to the new situations faced. Learning processes, yet, are not based on the mechanical repetition of the same choices (participants to this experiment proved, for example, in fact, to be able to imitate and replicate the strategies of their previous partners). A significant heterogeneity in the behaviour, related to personal traits and to the training treatment emerged. The second part of the game allows to understand how significantly such individual differences affect team performance in the same task. Best teams require a mix of similarity and heterogeneity among members.