- Basic collective action problem is related to the equilibrium
between contribution and resulting common good
- Depends on fungibility and homogeneity of contribution and good
- Collective good is homogeneous: a successful system
- More specifically, good decisions, designs, and implementations
that lead to the system as a whole working in a way that meets its
purposes, which will in turn provide individual goods like pay,
satisfaction, status
- The cost is heterogeneous: each person should be doing different
things to contribute to the good; this is about sharing out work,
with different people doing different tasks
- Modeling contribution as effort (time spent) is not helpful,
because if everyone does the same thing with their effort, the
result will have zero value
- Perception of what one person should do (is incentivized to do, is
assigned to do) does not necessarily result in an optimal common
good
- Value is related to satisfaction of the system structure
constraints
- Value of one contribution can be low if someone else does something
not consistent with it; the same contribution can have high value if
the other does something consistent
- Free rider problem (not contributing full share for the good
received) increases with size of group
- Detection of free rider becomes harder
- Perception of value of contribution decreases because it is a
smaller share of contribution, and share of common good is lower
- Work (cost) in a team is transferable, so if one member tries to
be a free rider, someone else will have to pick up the work. This
creates an incentive for enforcement
- If contributions are not homogeneous and shared equitably, is there
increased motivation to free ride? Is there greater motivation for
the “greater” contributor to dictate?
- Common interest of a team: pay, satisfaction in work, product
- Pay and satisfaction are private and excludable; product is neither
- Organization interest is the product, which may or may not be an
interest of the members
- Within the team, common interest can be about ability to work on
some part or make certain decisions
- Antagonistic interest in that people want more scope or to do less
work
- A successful system product is a common good (public good);
non-exclusivity of the result
Consider, for example, meetings that involve too many people, and
accordingly cannot make decisions promptly or carefully. Everyone
would like to have the meeting end quickly, but few if any will be
willing to let their pet concern be dropped to make this possible. And
though all of those participating presumably have an interest in
reaching sound decisions, this all too often fails to happen. When the
number of participants is large, the typical participant will know
that his own efforts will probably not make much difference to the
outcome, and that he will be affected by the meeting’s decision in
much the same way no matter how much or how little effort he puts into
studying the issues. […] The decisions of the meeting are thus
public goods to the participants (and perhaps others), and the
contribution that each participant will make toward achieving or
improving these public goods will become smaller as the meeting
becomes larger. It is for these reasons, among others, that
organizations so often turn to the small group; committees,
subcommittees, and small leadership groups are created, and once
created they tend to play a crucial role.
[Olson65, p. 53]
that needs careful design just as must as the system product
- This is the “machine” that, when run, builds the system product
- People form organization whether given or not
- Required in order to divide up work and to share things
- Know who is working on what, to avoid duplicated work and so direct people to the right person to talk to
- Know how to escalate issues when needed
- Know when a situation is exceptional and should be escalated, so that delegation can work
- Know that escalated issues and side-channel reporting will be dealt with
- Know how checks and approvals happen
- Ensure that no work or system parts fall through the cracks