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Journal of Business Economics

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01.02.2015 | Original Paper

The downside of looking for team players in job advertisements

verfasst von: Agnes Bäker

Erschienen in: Journal of Business Economics | Ausgabe 2/2015

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Abstract

Over the last two decades, the percentage of job advertisements requiring teamwork skills has greatly increased. However, the effects of requiring teamwork skills on the applicant pool are not yet clear. Addressing this research gap, this article makes use of original data from an online survey applying conjoint design. The survey evidence points to (a) effectively induced self-selection with respect to teamwork skills, but also (b) an adverse effect of requiring teamwork skills on the task-related skills of the applicants. More specifically, requiring teamwork skills in job advertisements resulted in potential employees with higher teamwork skills, ceteris paribus, applying with a significantly higher probability. However, it also resulted in potential employees with higher task-related skills, ceteris paribus, applying with a significantly lower probability. Considering that organizations always need employees with high task-related skills, but that they may not always need team players, they should carefully consider when the requirement for teamwork skills is listed in their job advertisements—because there is a downside to looking for team players.

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Journal of Business Economics

From January 2013, the Zeitschrift für Betriebswirtschaft (ZfB) is published in English under the title Journal of Business Economics (JBE). The Journal of Business Economics (JBE) aims at encouraging theoretical and applied research in the field of business economics and business administration, promoting the exchange of ideas between science and practice.

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The ambiguous results on the relation between task-related skills and a preference for teamwork might be explained by other aspects of a job, e.g. social or intrinsic rewards or the nature of the task (see Bäker and Pull 2013).

For reasons of simplicity, I assume that individual productivity remains the same for individual work and teamwork i.e. I abstract from free-riding behavior and complementarities.

Participants could rank job advertisements from one to eight, but they could also attribute the same rank to several job advertisements. To correct for potentially different levels of rank (e.g. because all advertisements were ranked rather well), the attributed ranks were centered by the average rank given.

The sum of the part worth utilities of all five characteristics of a job advertisement equals the total utility of the job advertisement. This total utility, in turn, determines whether or not the individual will reply to the advertisement.

As all variables were elicited within the same questionnaire, an exploratory principal-component factor analysis was conducted, resulting in several distinct factors, and thereby ruling out that a common method bias drives the following results.

Unfortunately, the time constraints associated with an online survey did not allow for tests of reliability.

Krueger and Schkade ( 2008) come to a similar conclusion looking at workers’ gregariousness in combination with the degree of actual social interaction at the work place.

When looking at the problems an „All Star“—Team causes (see for example Fischer and Boynton 2005), it might be plausible that firms prefer a team of team players with average task-related skills to a team of high potentials without teamwork skills.

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Titel: The downside of looking for team players in job advertisements
verfasst von: Agnes Bäker
Publikationsdatum: 01.02.2015
Verlag: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Erschienen in: Journal of Business Economics / Ausgabe 2/2015
Print ISSN: 0044-2372
Elektronische ISSN: 1861-8928
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11573-014-0725-5

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