Inequity version and team incentives

We study optimal contracts in a simple model where employees are averse to inequity as modelled by Fehr and Schmidt (1999). A "selfish" employer can profitably exploit such preferences among its employees by offering contracts which create inequity off-equilibrium and thus, they would leave employees feeling envy or guilt when they do not meet the employer's demands. Such contracts resemble team and relative performance contracts, and thus we derive conditions under which it may be beneficial to form work teams of employees with distributional concerns who were previously working individually. Similar results are obtained for status-seeking and efficiency concerns preferences.

Automatización de sistemas de desarrollo ágil - Scrum: Team & Role

Este proyecto ha sido realizado en una empresa mediante un convenio entre la UAB y la sede UNIT4 de Barberá del Vallés. En él se estudia la evolución de la implementación de un proyecto desarrollado mediante la metodología Scrum. Para realizar el seguimiento, el autor ha participado en un equipo de desarrollo formado por un conjunto de proyectistas de la UAB. El proyecto desarrollado consta de cuatro módulos que, en su conjunto, constituyen una aplicación capaz de gestionar los recursos de la metodología. Cada proyectista es responsable de un módulo. En este documento se recogen tanto las partes relacionadas con el módulo desarrollado, como con la evolución del proyecto.

The impact of gender composition on team performance and decision-making: Evidence from the field

We investigate whether the gender composition of teams affect theireconomic performance. We study a large business game, played in groups ofthree, where each group takes the role of a general manager. There are twoparallel competitions, one involving undergraduates and the other involvingMBAs. Our analysis shows that teams formed by three women aresignificantly outperformed by any other gender combination, both at theundergraduate and MBA levels. Looking across the performancedistribution, we find that for undergraduates, three women teams areoutperformed throughout, but by as much as 10pp at the bottom and by only1pp at the top. For MBAs, at the top, the best performing group is two menand one woman. The differences in performance are explained bydifferences in decision-making. We observe that three women teams are lessaggressive in their pricing strategies, invest less in R&D, and invest more insocial sustainability initiatives, than any other gender combination teams.Finally, we find support for the hypothesis that it is poor work dynamicsamong the three women teams that drives the results.

How competition controls team production: The case of fishing firms

Under team production, those who monitor individual productivity areusually the only ones compensated with a residual that varies withthe performance of the team. This pattern is efficient, as is shownby the prevalence of conventional firms, except for small teams andwhen specialized monitoring is ineffective. Profit sharing in repeatedteam production induces all team members to take disciplinary actionagainst underperformers through switching and separation decisions,however. Such action provides effective self-enforcemnt when themarkets for team members are competitive, even for large teams usingspecialized monitoring. The traditional share system of fishing firmsshows that for this competition to provide powerful enough incentivesthe costs of switching teams and measuring team productivity must bebellow. Risk allocation may constrain the organizational designdefined by the use of a share system. It does not account for itsexistence, however.

Chaotic dynamics and team effectiveness: evidence from professional basketball

Considering teams as complex adaptive systems (CAS) this study deals with changes in team effectiveness over time in a specific context: professional basketball. The sample comprised 23 basketball teams whose outcomes were analysed over a 12-year period according to two objective measures. The results reveal that all the teams showed chaotic dynamics, one of the key characteristics of CAS. A relationship was also found between teams showing low-dimensional chaotic dynamics and better outcomes, supporting the idea of healthy variability in organizational behaviour. The stability of the squad was likewise found to influence team outcomes, although it was not associated with the chaotic dynamics in team effectiveness. It is concluded that studying teams as CAS enables fluctuations in team effectiveness to be explained, and that the techniques derived from nonlinear dynamical systems, developed specifically for the study of CAS, are useful for this purpose.

Chaotic dynamics and team effectiveness: evidence from professional basketball

Considering teams as complex adaptive systems (CAS) this study deals with changes in team effectiveness over time in a specific context: professional basketball. The sample comprised 23 basketball teams whose outcomes were analysed over a 12-year period according to two objective measures. The results reveal that all the teams showed chaotic dynamics, one of the key characteristics of CAS. A relationship was also found between teams showing low-dimensional chaotic dynamics and better outcomes, supporting the idea of healthy variability in organizational behaviour. The stability of the squad was likewise found to influence team outcomes, although it was not associated with the chaotic dynamics in team effectiveness. It is concluded that studying teams as CAS enables fluctuations in team effectiveness to be explained, and that the techniques derived from nonlinear dynamical systems, developed specifically for the study of CAS, are useful for this purpose.