Sequential teamwork in competitive environments: Theory and evidence from swimming data

Many tasks require the input by more than one person very often with members of the team contributing sequentially. However, team production is plagued by disincentive problems. We investigate individual incentives to team production with sequential contributions and competing teams. We show that earlier contributors free-ride on team members contributing later on. We test our predictions on sports data using an athlete's performance in the individual race as a natural control for his relay performance. Our empirical findings strongly support the theoretical claims.     

Group polarization in the team dictator game reconsidered

While most papers on team decision-making find that teams behave more selfishly, less trustingly and less altruistically than individuals, Cason and Mui (1997) report that teams are more altruistic than individuals in a dictator game. Using a within-subjects design we re-examine group polarization by letting subjects make individual as well as team decisions in an experimental dictator game. In our experiment teams are more selfish than individuals, and the most selfish team member has the strongest influence on team decisions. Various explanations for the different findings in Cason and Mui (1997) and in our paper are discussed.      

The minority game unpacked:

We conduct an experiment on a minority-of-three game in which each player is a team composed of three subjects. Each team can freely discuss its strategies in the game and decisions must be made via majority rule. Team discussions are recorded and their content analyzed to detect evidence of strategy co-evolution among teams playing together. Our main results show no evidence supporting the mixed strategy Nash equilibrium solution, and provide evidence more consistent with reinforcement learning models than with belief-based models. Exhibiting level-2 rationality (i.e., reasoning about others’ beliefs) is positively and significantly correlated with higher than average earnings in the game. In addition, teams that are more successful tend to become more self-centered over time, paying more attention to their own past successes than to the behavior of other teams. Finally, we find evidence of mutual adaptation over time, as teams that are more strategic induce competing teams to be more self-centered instead. Our results contribute to the understanding of coordination dynamics resting on heterogeneity and co-evolution of decision rules. In addition, they provide support at the decision process level to the validity of modeling behavior using reinforcement learning models.     

创业团队异质性真能促进团队创造力提升吗——一个有中介的调节模型

随着团队创业成为主要创业形式,创业团队异质性对团队创造力的影响成为创业研究的重要议题。基于社会认知理论,将变革型领导和团队创新效能感纳入创业团队异质性与团队创造力关系模型中,构建一个有中介的调节模型。以珠三角高新科技园区创业团队为调研样本,运用结构方程模型方法实证研究创业团队异质性对团队创造力影响的内在机理。结果表明：创业团队异质性对团队创造力具有正向影响;团队创新效能感在创业团队异质性与团队创造力之间发挥中介作用;变革型领导在创业团队异质性与团队创新效能感的关系中发挥负向调节作用;变革型领导在创业团队异质性与团队创造力关系中发挥有中介的调节作用,这一调节作用通过团队创新效能感的中介实现。     

任人唯亲还是任人唯贤*——来自北京市文化创业企业的证据

在中国传统文化和市场经济的双重环境下,企业在治理结构上是“任人唯亲”还是“任人唯贤”一直是一个存在争议的问题。从公司治理实践上看,两种治理模式各有优劣。那么,企业在什么情况下更可能“任人唯亲”呢？本文基于最优授权理论提出了一个理论框架,然后使用一个独特的创业企业调查数据,采取计量经济学方法进行了实证检验。本文的主要发现是：有创业经历的或文化水平低的企业主更愿意任用亲戚担任企业高管,而男性、有管理学背景或有银行贷款的企业主更不愿意任用亲戚担任企业高管。本文的研究结论对于当前“大众创业、万众创新”政策具有重要的理论意义。     

Soccer transfers,team efficiency and the sports cycle in the most valued European soccer leagues – have European soccer teams been efficient in trading players?

The sale of soccer players is a serious issue for the sustainability of professional teams. This article discusses the efficiency of the values that 183 European soccer teams have received for the sales of their players since 2007. We estimated stochastic frontiers for these soccer teams using stochastic frontier analysis. We found that teams with higher numbers of titles, with huge past acquisitions of players, and achieving good rankings in the previous season tend to receive more transfer inflows. The efficiency of these inflows can be significantly influenced if the team exhibits a long sports history or if the team participates in the Champions League or in the Europa League.     

Two heads are less bubbly than one: team decision-making in an experimental asset market

In the world of mutual funds management, responsibility for investment decisions is increasingly entrusted to small teams instead of individuals. Yet the effect of team decision-making in a market environment has never been studied in a controlled experiment. In this paper, we investigate the effect of team decision-making in an asset market experiment that has long been known to reliably generate price bubbles and crashes in markets populated by individuals. We find that this tendency is substantially reduced when each decision-making unit is instead a team of two. This holds across a broad spectrum of measures of the severity of mispricing, both under a continuous double-auction institution and in a call market. The result is not driven by reduced turnover due to time required for deliberation by teams, and continues to hold even when subjects are experienced. Our result also holds not only when our teams treatments are compared to the ‘narrow’ baseline provided by the corresponding individuals treatments, but also when compared more broadly to the results of the large body of previous research on markets of this kind.     

论虚拟团队中的领导能力及其内涵的重新定位

对于分散的虚拟团队来说，可以发现在团队生命期内领导者的角色会在不同的时期由不同的团队成员扮演。研究虚拟团队旨在研究团队成员不同的任务和领导者、技术在虚拟团队中所发挥的作用。虚拟团队的形成可为领导能力的重新定义提供特殊的环境。     

基于扎根理论的大学生创业团队凝聚力影响机制研究

团队模式已成为大学生创业的重要形式,然而,“不能同甘也不能共苦”使得大部分大学生创业团队在其合作前期就发生决裂甚至解散。关于大学生创业团队凝聚力如何产生,受哪些因素影响,其形成机理是什么等问题,目前少有考察。运用扎根理论,通过对6组创业团队24个团队成员的深度访谈,挖掘出“认可共同利益”等17个子范畴和“工作事件的影响”等5个主范畴,构建工作事件工作环境的激活—认知评价—情感反应—态度形成理论模型,并运用情感事件理论和情绪归因理论分析深层次原因。在此基础上探讨增强创业团队凝聚力的外部干预措施。     

Individual or team decision-making—Causes and consequences of self-selection

Even though decision-making in small teams is pervasive in business and private life, little is known about subjects' preferences with respect to individual and team decision-making and about the consequences of respecting these preferences. We report the results from an experimental beauty-contest game where subjects could endogenously choose their preferred way of decision-making. About 60% of them preferred to decide in a team, and teams won the game significantly more often than individuals did. Nevertheless, both individuals and teams were highly satisfied with their chosen role, though for different reasons.     

信息型团队断裂与团队创造力的双通道模型——不同情绪调节策略的作用机理

基于分类加工模型和情绪调节过程模型,探讨信息型团队断裂与团队创造力间关系边界条件和作用机制,构建以情绪调节为调节变量,以知识利用和团队活力为中介变量的研究模型。基于106个研发团队566名成员样本数据对提出的假设进行实证检验,结果表明：在团队成员高认知重评策略下,信息型断裂将促进团队创造力提升,知识利用和团队活力在这一关系中起间接作用;在团队成员高表达抑制策略下,信息型断裂将抑制团队创造力提升,知识利用在这一关系中起间接作用。     

Teams, Firms and the Evolution of Profit Seeking Behavior

Even as advances in information theory over the last quarter century have cast increasing doubt on the proposition that firms successfully maximize profits, the objective of profit maximization continues to be an axiomatic feature of the neoclassical theory of the firm. This paper attempts to improve our understanding firms by treating the objective function as an open question. Specifically, an ontogenetic thought experiment is undertaken to address the question of what differentiates production teams from firms by asking why team members would sell their control rights to a principal, thereby transforming the team into a firm. What results is an account of the emergence of the objective of profit seeking. Profit seeking emerges endogenously as a more fit alternative than the objective of value maximization, which is less capable of coping with uncertainty through purposive adaptation.     

创业团队异质性对创业绩效的影响：团队治理的中介作用

借鉴结构—行为—绩效（SCP）模型，构建创业团队异质性—团队治理—创业绩效的研究框架，从人力资本理论、交易费用理论视角对三者之间的作用机理进行探讨和检验。结果表明，创业团队经验异质性与创业绩效之间显著正相关；创业团队经验异质性水平越高，越倾向于选择契约治理模式；契约治理在创业团队经验异质性与创业绩效之间起部分中介作用。实践中，在组建创业团队时要有意识地保持成员在知识技能、专业职能等经验方面的多样化和互补性，从而获得成长所需人力资本和社会资本。同时，需要在团队运作过程中采取与之相适应的治理模式，以制约由此产生的行为不一致甚至冲突，节约沟通协调成本，提高创业企业绩效。     

ENDOGENOUS ROLE ASSIGNMENT AND TEAM PERFORMANCE

We study how the mechanism used for assigning roles within teams affects team performance. Subjects play the takeover game in buyer–seller teams. Understanding optimal play is demanding for buyers and trivial for sellers, so teams should perform better if the buyer is the abler teammate. When teammates are allowed to jointly choose their roles, abler teammates tend to become buyers, but this is more than offset by disruptions to the learning process. We examine two potential sources for the latter effect and find that endogenous role assignment has a negative psychological and emotional effect on buyers.     

A note on peer effects between teams

We run an experiment to test for peer effects between teams. The subjects perform a team-work task in pairs of payoff-independent teams. They receive feedback about the outcome of their own and the paired team. Consistent with peer effects, we find that this feedback induces substantial correlation of effort choices between teams. The correlation translates into the variation of outcomes within and across pairs of teams.

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Electronic Supplementary Material  The online version of this article () contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.      

INTEGRATION OF NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICAN PLAYERS IN JAPAN'S PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL LEAGUES

Teams in Japan's two professional baseball leagues began to add foreign players in the early 1950s, with the average number per team reaching 5.79 in 2004. This was primarily because foreign hitters outperformed Japanese hitters. Hazard analysis shows that a poorly performing team was more likely to hire its first Caucasian and African American players earlier than a successful team. Econometric analysis of team use of foreign players over 45 seasons (1960–2004) shows that losing Central League teams used foreign players more often in following season(s), whereas past success of Pacific League teams did not affect their use of foreign players.     

国际创新团队研究的知识基础与热点前沿

创新团队日益成为合作创新的一种重要形式。基于1992年以来WOS数据库中国际创新团队研究文献的知识图谱分析,探寻国际创新团队研究的活跃程度、知识基础及前沿热点。通过文献共被引和期刊共被引分析,总结了创新团队工作氛围、绩效模型、影响因素及团队学习等方面的研究成果,形成深入研究创新团队的知识基础,指出管理学、心理学、技术创新等学科是研究创新团队的主要知识基础;通过关键词共现分析,发现团队绩效、团队组织管理、团队知识转移与分享是国际创新团队研究中最为关注的问题;知识管理与团队学习、跨职能创新团队、虚拟创新团队等是当前及今后一段时期的研究主题。     

Competition in shared markets and Major League Baseball broadcast viewership

This work evaluates the cross-quality elasticity of related products in the context of local market Nielsen Local People Meter ratings of Major League Baseball (MLB) regular season broadcasts from 2010 through 2013 from six teams in three shared markets. We employ a fixed effects panel regression with multi-way error clustering, finding that fans exhibit nuanced behaviour related to the absolute quality and relative quality of the two local teams. Our estimates imply quality-related competition for viewership between teams in the face of large disparities in quality. However, when both teams are of high quality, viewership increased beyond what own-team success would predict alone for the competing team. The competitive effects are largely dominated by the spillover effects. These findings point to complementary effects of team success beyond own-team interest, and bring about an important nuance in the literature on market definition, competition and substitution in sport.     

Financial development in adversarial and inquisitorial legal systems

This paper aims to understand why common law countries have more developed financial markets than civil law countries. One difference between these two legal origins is the procedure of evidence collection for a trial: It is adversarial in common law and inquisitorial in civil law. The adversarial system delegates the collection of evidence to a larger extent to lawyers than the inquisitorial system does. The paper presents a model of law and finance in which investors use courts to enforce their financial contracts with entrepreneurs. Investors are willing to lend more if courts collect evidence more efficiently. Financial markets are more developed in the adversarial than in the inquisitorial system if investors are richer than entrepreneurs or if lawyers are more productive than judges. Manipulation of evidence by lawyers has an ambiguous impact on finance.     

Location and attendance in major league baseball

This study uses a travel-cost model to analyse the attendance impacts on Major League Baseball (MLB) of the closest substitute MLB team. It is found that the closer two teams are, the lower attendance is at each team relative to two teams that are farther apart. In addition, when a new team moves into the area of an existing team, there is an additional initial reduction in attendance for the incumbent team. This has implications for actions aimed at changing the number of teams in MLB either by contraction or by possible antitrust approaches that would increase the number of teams, especially in megalopolis markets. Further, and consistent with past demand studies, pricing is in the inelastic portion of gate demand and fan loyalty is a significant contributor to the estimation of gate attendance.