Team Production with Punishment Option: Insights from a Real-Effort Experiment

Vranceanu, Radu; Ouardighi, Fouad El; Dubart, Delphine

doi:10.1002/mde.2678

Cited by 11 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…It follows previous research on team production with zero (e.g. Dijk et al, 2001;Vranceanu et al, 2014 ) or limited (e.g. Cason and Khan, 1999 ) efficiency gains.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 63%

Personal accountability and cooperation in teams

Sonntag

Zizzo

2019

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

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In a real effort lab and online team production experiment, we analyze exerted effort under different conditions of individual accountability. In a repeated setting, we vary the degree to which production can be directly traced back to a collaborator's individual or randomly drawn effort level, respectively. We find that individuals produce much less and the decline of effort over time is significantly steeper under high as compared to low and endogenously chosen personal accountability. While endogenous accountability provides an option for monitoring others, it does not force subjects to learn about their underperforming peers, thus limiting the typical decline of contributions over time. We conclude that accountability one step removed may be an interesting institutional setting for repeated collaborations in contexts where low accountability for political, social or legal reasons is not a viable option.

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“…It follows previous research on team production with zero (e.g. Dijk et al, 2001;Vranceanu et al, 2014 ) or limited (e.g. Cason and Khan, 1999 ) efficiency gains.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 63%

Personal accountability and cooperation in teams

Sonntag

Zizzo

2019

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

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“…The aim of this paper is to contribute to this literature by developing a real-effort experiment in which pairs of individuals were asked to "produce" correct answers in a counting task. In the experiment, subjects must count 7s in blocs of figures displayed successively on the computer screen (Mohnen et al (2008), Pokorny (2008), Vranceanu et al (2014)). Partners on a team receive an equal share of the team's output as compensation.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a typical round, subjects are asked to count the number of 7s in blocks of random numbers, successively displayed on the computer screen over four minutes (Mohnen et al (2008); Pokorny (2008); Vranceanu et al (2014)). The typical bloc has 30 columns and 6 rows (see Appendix); in each bloc, the number of 7s varies at random between 11 and 24, with an average of 18.…”

Section: Experimental Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Notice that this compensation scheme should encourage cooperation, as in the experiment byKuhn and Villeval (2013), and would part from the competitive environment specific to the experiments byGneezy (2003) orNiederle and Vesterlund (2007, 2011), in which individual pay is based on a tournament.7 We also used the dataset ofVranceanu et al (2014) to check that there is no gender effect in groups that play a similar real-effort task without knowing the gender of the partner.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Gender Interaction in Teams: Experimental Evidence on Performance and Punishment Behavior

Jung

Vranceanu

2015

SSRN Journal

Self Cite

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This paper reports results from a real-effort experiment in which men and women are paired to form a two-member team and asked to execute a real-effort task. Each participant receives an equal share of the team's output. Workers who perform better than their partner can punish him/her by imposing a fine. We manipulate the teams' gender composition (man-man, man-woman, and woman-woman) to analyze whether an individual's performance and sanctioning behavior depends on his/her gender and the gender interaction within the team. The data show that, on average, men perform slightly better than women. A man's performance will deteriorate when paired with a woman, while a woman's performance will improve when paired with a woman. When underperforming, women are sanctioned more often and more heavily than men; if sanctioned, men tend to improve their performance, while women's performance does not change.

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“…The authors find that subjects eventually coordinate at the efficient level of zero errors from all members. The second real effort coordination experiment was conducted by Vranceanu et al (2015). The authors use the task of counting 7's in a block of random numberscorrectly reporting the number of 7's in a block generates one unit of output.…”

Section: Connection To the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Nonbinding Goals in Teams: A Real Effort Coordination Experiment

Fan

Gómez‐Miñambres

2020

M&SOM

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Problem definition: We investigate the impact of nonbinding (wage-irrelevant) goals, set by a manager, on a team of workers with “weak-link” production technology. Can nonbinding goals improve team production when team members face production complementarity? Academic/practical relevance: Nonbinding goals are easy to implement and ubiquitous in practice. These goals have been shown to improve individual performance, but it remains to be seen if such goals are effective in team production when there is production complementarity among workers. Methodology: We first develop a theoretical model where goals act as reference points for workers’ intrinsic motivation to complete the task. We then test our hypotheses in a controlled, human-subjects experiment. In our experiment, participants act as managers or workers, and we examine the impact of nonbinding goals on team outcomes. Results: Consistent with our model, we find evidence that team production does increase when managers are able to set goals. This effect is strongest when goals are challenging but attainable for weak-link workers. However, we also find evidence that many managers assign goals that are too challenging for weak-link workers, resulting in suboptimal team production, lower profits, and higher wasted performance (performance above the weak-link level). Managerial implications: Our analysis indicates that goals are effective motivators in teams, but some managers may have difficulty overcoming personal biases when setting goals. The task of setting team goals is more complex than setting individual goals, and many managers can benefit from training on how to set good goals for the team. Moreover, our finding that suboptimal goals also increase wasted performance suggests that improving goal-setting strategies is especially important in production settings where overperformance is costly for the firm (scrap, energy use, inventory costs, lower prices as a result of oversupply, etc.).

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Team Production with Punishment Option: Insights from a Real-Effort Experiment

Cited by 11 publications

References 38 publications

Personal accountability and cooperation in teams

Personal accountability and cooperation in teams

Gender Interaction in Teams: Experimental Evidence on Performance and Punishment Behavior

Nonbinding Goals in Teams: A Real Effort Coordination Experiment

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