Brais Álvarez Pereira
Nova School of Business and Economics, BELAB and NOVAFRICA
Shan Aman-Rana
University of Virginia
Alexia Delfino
Bocconi University
ISSN 2183-0843
Working Paper No 2301
February 2023
Abstract:
We analyse the relationship of performance with team diversity and size. We first propose a model with knowledge spillovers in production, which predicts that the effect of team diversity on individual performance increases with team size. We experimentally test the model by randomly assigning students to solve knowledge questions in teams of different sizes, with or without diversity. Our main finding is that the benefit of diversity is increasing in team size. We further show that such benefit is heterogeneous depending on students’ gender and the gender composition of teams. This has implications for how organizations can design their teams to maximize knowledge flows and performance.
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