Core-containing cliques and temporary team performance: the moderating role of core-member composition

Temporary teams are widely used in industries such as film production, construction, and scientific research to address highly uncertain tasks. Within these teams, members often form multiple cliques based on prior collaboration. While such cliques can improve coordination, they may also generate internal competition, ultimately affecting team performance. Because core members possess high levels of external recognition and status, cliques containing them may become particularly salient units for social comparison. This study therefore draws on social comparison theory to examine how the number of core-containing cliques is associated with temporary team performance. It further explores how this relationship is moderated by core-member composition, specifically the proportion of core members and the concentration of core members across core-containing cliques. Using longitudinal project-level archival data from MyAnimeList covering 1986–2022, we identify collaboration-based cliques through social network analysis and test our hypotheses. The results show that a greater number of these cliques is associated with lower team performance, and this negative association becomes stronger when cliques contain a higher proportion of core members. However, the distribution concentration of these core members does not significantly moderate the relationship. By shifting the focus from attribute-based subgrouping to cliques rooted in historical collaboration, this study advances clique research and provides evidence consistent with a social-comparison account of how status-salient clique structures relate to temporary team performance. The findings also offer practical implications for the composition and coordination of temporary project teams.