The (Mis)Perceived Determinants of Team Success in Non-Routine Tasks

Abstract

Over the last decades, work tasks have become increasingly non-routine, complex, and analytical, leading to the widespread adoption of team-based organizational structures. To assemble productive teams and implement efficient governance structures, human resource (HR) experts need to form correct expectations about the most crucial determinants of team success. This study documents HR experts’ perceptions (n=3,000) regarding the relative importance of various team composition dimensions and governance structures for performance in non-routine analytical tasks. Exploiting the unique opportunity to contrast expectations with actual performance data of 1,062 teams, we show that experts hold qualitatively accurate beliefs. However, they substantially underestimate the value of leadership. These patterns hold up in an additional general population sample (n=3,000). Furthermore, we document implicit biases against (particularly female) leadership, which partially depend on the respondent’s own gender.