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AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction

Abstract

Teams rapidly form and dissolve in organizations to solve specific problems that require diverse skills and experience. For example, in the information systems context, cross-functional and project-based teams that comprise a mix of personnel who temporarily work away from their usual functional groups (best perform agile software development (Barlow et al., 2011; Keith, Demirkan, & Goul, 2013). These newly formed work teams need to become productive as quickly as possible. Team video gaming (TVG) has emerged as a potential team-building activity. When new teammates play a collaborative video game, they engage in cooperative and challenging goals while they enjoy the games. Although research has shown that video games can promote learning and recreation, it has not investigated the effects of commercial video games on subsequent work-team performance. Better understanding this issue will provide insights into how to rapidly develop cohesion among newly formed work teams and, thus, lead to greater team performance. We examined this issue through a laboratory experiment. We found that teams in the TVG treatment demonstrated a 20 percent productivity improvement in subsequent tasks (in our case, a team-based geocaching scavenger hunt) over teams that participated in traditional team-building activities.

DOI

DOI: 10.17705/1thci.00110

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