Voluntary Teaming and Effort

Discussion Papers 745

7 Conclusion

Our results bear relevant implications for workforce management. Teams with a strong het-
erogeneity of abilities are likely to show a relatively large dispersion of efforts. Our experi-
mental observations suggest that this dispersion can be reduced by allowing for voluntary
teaming. In general, voluntary team effort will tend to be higher than enforced team effort.
The effect is likely to be the stronger the less heterogeneity there is.

Of course, voluntary teaming is just one of many ways to enhance team cooperation. From
many previous experiments on prisoners’ dilemma type of situations, where individually
rational behavior leads to inefficient outcomes for the group, we know that communication
(e.g., Ostrom, Gardner and Walker 1992, 1994, Sally 1995, Brosig, Weimann, and Ockenfels
2003), and, as discussed in Section 5 above, the opportunity to punish uncooperative others
either financially (e.g., Fehr and Gachter 2000a, 2002, Masclet et al. 2003) or by social exclu-
sion (Hirshleifer and Rasmusen 1989, Hauk 2003, Cinyabugama, Page and Putterman 2005)
are efficient ways to increase cooperation in teams.

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