Team Diversity and Incentives

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Imhof, Lorens A.; Kraekel, Matthias
• 署名单位: University of Bonn
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2022.4419
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 2497-2516
• 关键词: asymmetric tournaments; career competition; heterogeneous agents; moral hazard; principal-agent model

摘要

This paper analyzes how the degree of task-related team diversity influences the team outcome. The focus is on a novel benefit of team diversity that does not depend on complementary skills or mutual learning. We consider a multiagent setting where the employer makes use of career competition to motivate the team. Our analysis reveals incentive effects that do not exist in the well-studied case of teams of size 2. In teams with more than two members, diversity may have a positive effect on the efforts of some members although diversity leads to unbalanced career competition. As a consequence, expected profits are higher under a moderate degree of diversity compared with a situation with completely homogeneous agents. This result shows that the employer prefers a positive degree of diversity for pure incentive reasons.