The impact of top performers on project teams

Management and scholars have been searching for the determinants of project team performance for many years. Individual characteristics and intra‐team processes are most often hypothesized to influence team performance. To date, though, we still do not really understand why some teams perform better than other teams. Studies have provided mixed findings and inconclusive results. The study described in this article continues the search for variables that influence project team performance. The findings provide support for an increasingly, albeit controversial, discussion occurring within human resource circles, concerning the impact of top performers on team performance.