Tacit Coordination of Collective Action in Multiple-task Environments

Miami University, Oxford OH

Investigators

Abstract

Much of the work that is accomplished in organizations, schools, families, and government settings involves people working together in groups. This project examines how it is that people are able to coordinate their efforts in cooperative, interdependent workgroups operating in multiple task environments. The research is informed by a model of tacit coordination, which suggests that individual group members allocate their efforts to tasks based on expectations about teammates' behavior (social knowledge), perceptions of task demands (task knowledge) and assessments of one's own capabilities (self knowledge). Theoretically relevant features of the task environment include group size, the number of tasks to be accomplished and the staffing demands of the tasks. The Tacit Coordination Model incorporates constructs from traditional decision theory and yields normative predictions for task choices based on the assumption that members choose tasks that maximize the marginal expected utility of their actions. Nonnormative heuristics for task choices are also considered. For example, members may avoid tasks for which their contributions are likely to be dispensable (overstaffed tasks) or futile (understaffed tasks). Six studies use a collective problem-solving paradigm and examine the development of coordination over repeated trials. These studies explore the use of normative principles and nonnormative heuristics by members to guide their task choices and the relationships among these rules and the effectiveness of team coordination. Also of interest is the impact of group heterogeneity (diversity of abilities and values) on coordinated action for tasks that have different staffing requirements. The ideas embodied in the model suggest, for example, that heterogeneity facilitates coordinated action when tasks can be staffed by one member but impedes coordination when tasks must be staffed by all members. The empirical work will inform the development of a computational model of tacit coordination, which can facilitate studying the collective implication of individual choices and the emergent properties of using different coordination rules over time.