IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iso/wpaper/0054.html

Some searches may not work properly. We apologize for the inconvenience.

   My bibliography  Save this paper

Effort Provision in Entrepreneurial Teams: Effects of Team Size, Free-Riding and Peer Pressure

Author

Listed:
  • Uschi Backes-Gellner

    (Institute for Strategy and Business Economics, University of Zurich)

  • Arndt Werner

    (Institut für Mittelstandsforschung Bonn (IfM Bonn), (Institute for Small and Medium Size Enterprises, Bonn))

  • Alwine Mohnen

    (University of Cologne)

Abstract

This paper analyzes whether effort provision in entrepreneurial teams depends on the size of the team, assuming that size determines the strength of free-riding and peer pressure effects in entrepreneurial teams. We provide a theoretical model and empirical analyses to explain the joint effect of free-riding and peer pressure on effort in start-up teams. We begin with an economic model by Kandel and Lazear (1992) and enrich it using insights from entrepreneurship research. Based on our model, we first hypothesize that with increasing team size in entrepreneurial teams, the efforts of the individual team founders should follow an inverted U-shaped pattern. Second, we argue that the peer pressure effect is stronger if team members have stronger social ties, and thus we expect the effort-maximizing team size to be larger in teams with stronger social ties. Using a data set from 214 German start-up teams, we find that our hypotheses are supported by the data.

Suggested Citation

  • Uschi Backes-Gellner & Arndt Werner & Alwine Mohnen, 2005. "Effort Provision in Entrepreneurial Teams: Effects of Team Size, Free-Riding and Peer Pressure," Working Papers 0054, University of Zurich, Institute for Strategy and Business Economics (ISU), revised Sep 2014.
    • Handle: RePEc:iso:wpaper:0054
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.business.uzh.ch/RePEc/iso/ISU_WPS/54_ISU_full.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rupert Sausgruber, 2005. "Testing for Team Spirit - An Experimental Study," Experimental 0508001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kristensen, Soren Rud & Bech, Mickael & Lauridsen, Jørgen T, 2013. "Who to pay for performance? The choice of organisational level for hospital performance incentives," DaCHE discussion papers 2013:5, University of Southern Denmark, Dache - Danish Centre for Health Economics.
    2. Alwine Mohnen & Kathrin Pokorny & Dirk Sliwka, 2008. "Transparency, Inequity Aversion, and the Dynamics of Peer Pressure in Teams: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(4), pages 693-720, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alwine Mohnen & Kathrin Pokorny & Dirk Sliwka, 2008. "Transparency, Inequity Aversion, and the Dynamics of Peer Pressure in Teams: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(4), pages 693-720, October.
    2. Simon Gächter & Daniele Nosenzo & Martin Sefton, 2012. "The Impact of Social Comparisons on Reciprocity," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 114(4), pages 1346-1367, December.
    3. Frey, Bruno S. & Torgler, Benno, 2007. "Tax morale and conditional cooperation," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 136-159, March.
    4. Bruno S. Frey & Benno Torgler, 2004. "Taxation and Conditional Taxation," Working Papers 2004/7, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Peer Pressure; Free-Riding; Entrepreneurial Teams; Team Size;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M5 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics
    • M13 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - New Firms; Startups
    • M21 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Economics - - - Business Economics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iso:wpaper:0054. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: IBW IT (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/isuzhch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.