Dream Teams and the Apollo Effect

Arbeitspapier

We model leadership selection, competition, and decision making in teams with heterogeneous membership composition. We show that if the choice of leadership in a team is imprecise or noisy—which may arguably be the case if appointment decisions are made by non-expert administrators—then it is not necessarily the case that the best individuals should be selected as team members. On the contrary, and in line with what has been called the “Apollo effect,” a “dream team” consisting of unambiguously higher performing individuals may perform worse in terms of team output than a group composed of lower performers. We characterize the properties of the leadership selection and production processes which lead to the Apollo effect and clarify when the opposite effect occurs in which supertalent performs better than comparatively less qualified groups.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 6381

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Game Theory and Bargaining Theory: General ; Analysis of Collective Decision-Making: General ; Labor Standards: General
• Subject: team composition ; leadership ; mistakes

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Gershkov, Alex ; Schweinzer, Paul
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2017

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/155623
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET