Management Accounting Section Midyear Meeting

Upward Influencers in Teams

• In Event: Team Dynamics

Abstract

Upward influencers, employees that are more favorably perceived by their supervisors than their peers and subordinates, are predicted by economic and accounting theories and are found to be ubiquitous in many organizations. Despite their prevalence, whether having them in teams can impact team performance outcomes is generally underexplored. This paper fills this void by using proprietary data from a service-providing organization that allows for identification of upward influencers based on its 360-degree person evaluation. Our identification strategy relies on the plausibly exogenous team assignment at the organization with team performance being evaluated by clients. We find that the relationship between the proportion of upward influencers on a team and team performance is nonlinear and exhibits an inverted-U shape. Our findings also reveal that upward influencers positively influence team performance through building better vertical relationships with supervisors, and negatively influence team performance by impairing horizontal relationships with colleagues. Moreover, we show that the impact of upward influencers on team performance is more pronounced when the need for collaboration and information sharing is high and when managers are less experienced. Taken together, this study has important implications on team composition and managerial experience as control systems.

Authors

• Yaxuan Chen, Harvard University

• Wei Cai, Columbia University

• Jee-Eun Shin, University of Toronto