1. Who Would You Like to Work With?
- Author
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Jacqueline N. Lane, Leslie A. DeChurch, Diego Gómez-Zará, Marlon Twyman, Noshir Contractor, and Matthew Paras
- Subjects
Team composition ,Knowledge management ,Computer science ,business.industry ,Field (Bourdieu) ,05 social sciences ,020207 software engineering ,02 engineering and technology ,Human capital ,Work (electrical) ,Agency (sociology) ,0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,business ,050107 human factors ,Social capital - Abstract
People and organizations are increasingly using online platforms to assemble teams. In response, HCI researchers have theorized frameworks and created systems to support team assembly. However, little is known about how users search for and choose teammates on these platforms. We conducted a field study where 530 participants used a team formation system to assemble project teams. We describe how users' traits and social networks influence their teammate searches, teammate choices, and team composition. Our results show that (a) what users initially search for differs from what they finally choose: initially they search for experts and sociable users, but they are ultimately more likely to choose their prior social connections as their teammates; (b) users' decisions lead to non-diverse and segregated teams, where most of the expertise and social capital are concentrated in a few teams. We discuss the implications of these results for designing team formation systems than promote users' agency.
- Published
- 2019
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