This paper aims to find the impact of teams on worker productivity under fixed pay and whether workers in this setting should work individually or in teams in order to increase productivity. It does so by analyzing data obtained from a field experiment conducted on stockers in an average sized Dutch supermarket. For eight weeks stockers were observed for 4 weeks when working individually and for 4 weeks when working in teams of two. The comparison of the data gathered in these periods, yields some interesting results. The data provides enough evidence necessary to conclude that working in teams in the setting of the mentioned field experiment lowers stocker productivity with 6.12%. Mainly due to free-riders and increased store crowdedness. After that, one extra week of individual work was observed. This week of the experiment provides data which suggests that stockers became more productive on an individual level during the pair treatment. This would imply that working in teams under fixed pay does not necessarily yield an increase in productivity, but stockers do seem to learn from other stockers when working in teams. Next to the fact that supermarkets could benefit from this information, this setting is also quite uncommon in related researches on team productivity. This is quite remarkable as a lot of supermarkets share this exact setting.

Kapoor, S.
hdl.handle.net/2105/34278
Business Economics
Erasmus School of Economics

Zeeuw, N. de. (2016, July 27). The Impact of Teams on Productivity under Fixed Pay. Business Economics. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/2105/34278