Team familiarity, role experience, and performance
Subtitle: evidence from Indian software services
By: Robert S. Huckman, Bradley R. Staats, David M. Upton .
Contributors: Staats, Bradley R.; Upton, David M., 1959-; Harvard Business School
Edition: Rev.
Series: Working paper / Harvard Business School -- 08-019; Working paper (Harvard Business School) -- 08-019
Publisher: Harvard Business School
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Boston
Language: eng
Number of pages: 34
Description: Much of the literature on team learning views experience as a unidimensional concept captured by the cumulative production volume or number of projects completed by a team. Implicit in this approach is the assumption that teams are stable in their membership and internal organization. In practice, however, such stability is rare, as the composition and structure of teams often changes over time or between projects. In this paper, we use detailed data from an Indian software services firm to examine how such changes may affect the accumulation of experience within, and the performance of, teams. We find that the level of team familiarity (i.e., the average number of times that each member has worked with every other member of the team) has a significant and positive effect on performance, but we observe that conventional measures of the experience of individual team members (e.g., years at the firm) are not consistently related to performance. We do find, however, that the role experience of individuals in a team (i.e., years in a given role within a team) is associated with better team performance.
Notes: "Revised February 2008"--Publisher's web site.

Includes bibliographical references.