Are Permanent or Temporary Teams More Efficient: A Possible Explanation of the Empirical Data

Abstract

It is known that in education, stable (long-term) student teams are more effective than temporary (short-term) ones. It turned out that the same phenomenon is true for workers working on a long-term project. However, somewhat surprisingly, for small-scale projects, the opposite is true: teams without any prior collaboration experience are more successful. Moreover, it turns out that if combine in a team members with prior collaboration experience and members without such experience, the efficiency of the team gets even lower. In this paper, we provide a possible explanation for this strange empirical phenomenon. 1 Formulation of the Problem In education, permanent (or at least stable) teams are more efficient. In the education environment, empirical data shows that when students form stable long-term teams to study together, the results are much better than when form temporary team for each class or even for each assignment; see, e.g., [2, 4]. This is not just an empirical fact: there are theoretical explanations for this phenomenon; see, e.g., [3]. Surprisingly, in industry, sometimes temporary teams are more efficient. Based on the results of education-related studies, one would expect that in industry, similarly, stable teams should be more efficient.