Stability of membership and persistence in teams: Impacts on performance

Iftekhar Ahmed; Marshall Scott Poole; Andrew Pilny

doi:10.1037/gdn0000109

Stability of membership and persistence in teams: Impacts on performance

Iftekhar Ahmed
, Marshall Scott Poole
, Andrew Pilny

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

14 Scopus citations

Abstract

There is evidence that the more experience team members have working together, the greater the capacity of the team to perform effectively. On the other hand, studies also show that variability in team membership may make a team more effective due to new ideas and routines team members are exposed to. This study investigates the impact of membership stability on performance in teams that engage in multiple tasks over time. It contrasts closed teams in which membership is constant over time with open teams in which membership changes over time. Both closed and open teams also vary in terms of persistence, the number of tasks the team performs over its course of work. This study investigated the impacts of membership stability and persistence on performance in action teams using a sample of 4,871 teams from a Massive Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG). Overall, closed teams were more successful than open teams in performance of in-game tasks. Persistence, the number of times a team played, had a quadratic relationship with performance for closed teams and a linear relationship with performance for open teams. Results also suggested that variability in membership had positive effects in that open teams were able to sustain their effectiveness for a longer time than closed teams.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	156-169
Number of pages	14
Journal	Group Dynamics
Volume	23
Issue number	3-4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1037/gdn0000109
State	Published - Sep 2019

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 American Psychological Association.

Funding

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF IIS-0729421, NSF IIS-1247861, and via the XSEDE project’s Extended Collaborative Support Service under Grant NSF-OCI 1053575), the Army Research Institute (ARI W91WAW-08-C-0106) and Air Force Research Lab (AFRL Contract FA8650-10-C-7010). The data used for this research was provided by SONY Online Entertainment. The findings solely represent the opinions of the authors and not of the sponsors. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF IIS-0729421, NSF IIS-1247861, and via the XSEDE project's Extended Collaborative Support Service under Grant NSF-OCI 1053575), the Army Research Institute (ARI W91WAW-08-C-0106) and Air Force Research Lab (AFRL Contract FA8650-10-C-7010). The data used for this research was provided by SONY Online Entertainment. The findings solely represent the opinions of the authors and not of the sponsors.

Funders	Funder number
Air Force Research Lab
US Army Institute of Surgical Research
NSF IIS-0729421	NSF IIS-1247861
National Science Foundation Arctic Social Science Program	IIS-1247861, IIS-0729421, NSF-OCI 1053575
Air Force Research Laboratory	FA8650-10-C-7010
U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research	ARI W91WAW-08-C-0106
Sony

Keywords

Action teams
Group performance
Massive multiplayer online games
Membership stability
Multiple team membership

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Social Psychology
Applied Psychology

Access to Document

10.1037/gdn0000109

Cite this

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title = "Stability of membership and persistence in teams: Impacts on performance",

abstract = "There is evidence that the more experience team members have working together, the greater the capacity of the team to perform effectively. On the other hand, studies also show that variability in team membership may make a team more effective due to new ideas and routines team members are exposed to. This study investigates the impact of membership stability on performance in teams that engage in multiple tasks over time. It contrasts closed teams in which membership is constant over time with open teams in which membership changes over time. Both closed and open teams also vary in terms of persistence, the number of tasks the team performs over its course of work. This study investigated the impacts of membership stability and persistence on performance in action teams using a sample of 4,871 teams from a Massive Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG). Overall, closed teams were more successful than open teams in performance of in-game tasks. Persistence, the number of times a team played, had a quadratic relationship with performance for closed teams and a linear relationship with performance for open teams. Results also suggested that variability in membership had positive effects in that open teams were able to sustain their effectiveness for a longer time than closed teams.",

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Stability of membership and persistence in teams: Impacts on performance

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

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