Does Transition Experience Improve Newcomer Performance? Evidence From the National Basketball Association

Abstract

A substantial body of research has highlighted the effects of experience on individual performance in groups. However, the challenges individuals confront after moving between groups require the adoption of more finely grained categorizations of experience to understand how they will help or hinder performance in novel group environments. This article develops a distinct form of experience here termed transition experience to deal specifically with insights individuals accumulate as they shift membership between different groups and contrasts its impact with that of the frequently examined component of related task experience. Player movement data from the National Basketball Association is used to show that related task experience can produce negative consequences, consistent with prior research. Conversely, low to moderate levels of transition experience can aid performance. This holds true for both individual performance and performance more closely related to coordinated actions with teammates.

Individuals’ Power Persistence in Teams: A Study Examining the Effects of Individuals’ Competence, Uncooperative Behavior and Team Performance in the National Basketball Association

“…Player's competence (i.e., contribution to team wins) was measured by win shares standardized per 48 min played (WS48), a measure developed by Oliver (2004) and previously used in papers using NBA as a research context (e.g., Hoffer and Freidel, 2014;Radzevick, 2016). Following Christie and Barling (2010), we used player transgressions to measure uncooperative behavior.…”

A Review and Technological Consideration of the Bona Fide Group Perspective

“…Changes in group boundaries must be renegotiated through group interaction during fluctuating membership (Putnam & Stohl, 1990). This is not to say that groups must restart from the beginning upon group compositional change; previous member and group experiences can influence future iterations of the group (Radzevick, 2016). However, the reification of past group structure is also informed by present interaction, which reflects individual and organizational influences.…”