Shared experience, performance pressure and performance: evidence from sports data

Abstract

This dissertation comprises of four single studies and centers around the effects of (shared) experience and performance pressure on (team) performance. Another central construct con-stitutes “inequalities” in form of wages and ethnicity. While chapter 2 & 3 focus on teams, chap-ter 4 & 5 focus on individuals and all four studies utilize sports data to contribute to these litera-tures. In particular, chapter 2 analyzes the implications of (shared) experience in form of team and task familiarity on team performance. While these (positive) links have been studied before (e.g. Reagans et al. 2005), comparatively little is known about the driving mechanisms. Chap-ter 2 advances the previous literature by examining team coordination and team cooperation as mediators between team and task familiarity on the one side and team performance on the other. While also analyzing teams, chapter 3 sheds light on conflicting empirical results con-cerning the effects of pay dispersion (e.g. Bucciol et al. 2014) by distinguishing between dis-persion in explained pay (positive performance implications) and dispersion in unexplained pay (negative performance implications). Further, this study examines the moderating effects of shared team task experience and performance pressure on these links. The subsequent chap-ter 4 adds to the literature on performance pressure by studying heterogeneities on the individ-ual level and answering the question who can handle the obstacles of performance pressure better than others. By doing so the study contributes to the literature on performance pressure and individual differences (e.g. Mitchell et al. 2019). In particular, the study argues that high resilient individuals are better in dealing with high pressure situations than low resilient individu-als. The last study analyzes evaluators that arguably perform in a setting, which is constantly characterized by higher levels of performance pressure and analyzes in how far the evaluation decisions are biased towards individuals that share ethnical similarities with the evaluator.