ABSTRACT

The ever-increasingly complex economic activities across all industries have rendered teamwork a ubiquitous feature of the modern economy. Selecting the right employees, however, is conceived to be an ever more challenging task in the presence of an increasing number of adult only- children, who are widely perceived to be spoilt, self-centred and thus with weak team spirit. Our experimental study reassesses such negative stereotype by investigating only children’s participation willingness and their commitment to a group effort. Only children are found to contribute as much as their counterparts with siblings to the group effort although with slightly weaker willingness to join. Furthermore, the provision of peer information about relative performance is found to be significantly more effective in incentivizing only children than non-only children on both their willingness to participate in teamwork and their contribution to a group effort. Together, our findings suggest that only children can outperform their counterparts with siblings in teamwork as the uncertainty of team productivity is reduced by the introduction of feedback information.

摘要

各行各业日益复杂的经济活动使团队合作成为现代经济的普遍特征。然而，在越来越多的成年独生子女面前，选择合适的员工被认为是一项越来越具有挑战性的任务，他们被普遍认为被宠坏、以自我为中心，因此团队精神薄弱。我们的实验研究通过调查独生子女的参与意愿和他们对集体努力的承诺来重新评估这种消极的刻板印象。发现独生子女与有兄弟姐妹的同龄人对团体努力的贡献一样多，尽管加入意愿略弱。此外，研究发现，在激励独生子女参与团队合作的意愿和对集体努力的贡献方面，提供关于相对表现的同伴信息比非独生子女更有效。总之，我们的研究结果表明，由于引入反馈信息降低了团队生产力的不确定性，因此独生子女可以在团队合作中胜过有兄弟姐妹的同龄人。