Microsoft Word - TeamStructureDGK_Mar2010

Abstract Team design drives organizational performance in industries in which products are developed by project-based teams. Team members' expertise in what they do, that is, in the tasks they perform and the hierarchical roles they occupy, is critical to teams' success. Equally important is the ability to coordinate interdependent activities, which is easier when team members have experience of working with each other. Many project teams change frequently, however, hampering the development of team familiarity. In this paper we study the performance consequences of two alternative coordination mechanisms: shared experience of working within the same firm, and general experience interacting and coordinating within teams. Using data on electronic games development teams, we find that shared firm experience and teaming experience are positively associated with the commercial success of electronic games, and that these effects matter equally for teams with low and high levels of familiarity. Our results matter for the theory of learning and coordination in teams, and for the practice of team design in project-based organizations

Fatherhood and Managerial Style: How a Male CEO’s Children Affect the Wages of His Employees 1

The authors contributed equally to the study and are listed in alphabetical order. Motivated by a growing literature in the social sciences suggesting that the transition to fatherhood has a profound effect on men’s values, we study how the wages of employees change after a male chief executive officer (CEO) has children using comprehensive panel data on the employees, CEOs, and families of CEOs in all but the smallest Danish firms between 1996 and 2006. We find that (a) a male CEO generally pays his employees less generously after fathering a child, (b) the birth of a daughter has a less negative influence on wages than does the birth of a son and has a positive influence if the daughter is the CEO’s first, and (c) the wages of female employees are less adversely affected than are those of male employees and positively affected by the CEO’s first child of either gender. We also find that male CEOs pay themselves more after fathering a child, especially after fathering a son. These results are consistent with a desire by the CEO to husband more resources for his family after fathering a child and the psychological priming of the CEO’s generosity after the birth of his first daughter and specifically toward women after the birth of his first child of either gender