Tacit Coordination of Collective Action in Multiple-task Environments

在组织、学校、家庭和政府环境中完成的大部分工作都需要团队合作。这个项目考察了人们如何能够在协作的、相互依赖的、在多个任务环境中运行的工作组中协调他们的工作。这项研究基于默会协调模型，该模型认为，个体团队成员根据对队友行为的期望(社会知识)、对任务需求的感知(任务知识)和对自身能力的评估(自我知识)来分配他们的努力。从理论上讲，任务环境的相关特征包括小组规模、要完成的任务数量和任务的人员需求。默会协调模型融合了传统决策理论的结构，并基于成员选择的任务使其行动的边际预期效用最大化的假设，产生了对任务选择的规范性预测。任务选择的非规范启发式也被考虑。例如，成员可能会避免他们的贡献可能是可有可无的任务(人员过剩的任务)或徒劳的(人员不足的任务)。六项研究使用集体解决问题的范式，并考察了重复试验中协调能力的发展。这些研究探索了成员使用规范性原则和非规范性启发式来指导他们的任务选择，以及这些规则之间的关系和团队协调的有效性。同样令人感兴趣的是，群体的异质性(能力和价值观的多样性)对具有不同人员配置要求的任务的协调行动的影响。例如，模型中体现的思想表明，当任务可以由一个成员配备人员时，异质性促进协调行动，但当任务必须由所有成员配备人员时，异质性阻碍协调。这项实证工作将为默会协调计算模型的发展提供信息，该模型有助于研究个体选择的集体含义以及使用不同协调规则随时间的涌现特性。

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.