The Provision of Effort in Self-Designing Work Groups: The Case of Collaborative Research

Abstract

Teams of academic coauthors can be conceptualized as self-designing work groups, an infrequently studied but increasingly prevalent group structure. This research note considers issues surrounding how management scholars form collaborative teams, provide effort toward completion of research projects, evaluate colleagues' efforts, and decide whether to pursue further collaborative opportunities with them. The findings indicate that withholding effort occurs in self-designing groups, such as research collaborations, and that the emotional bonds that group members form with colleagues play a key role in whether they decide to work together again, as well as in how they react to perceptions that a coauthor withheld effort.