Collaborative Research: Routine Formation in Organizations: Theory and Experimental Evidence

组织惯例是组织成员之间持续的顺序互动模式。这种惯例被认为是负责组织作为集体决策结构的效率优势。然而，迄今为止，几乎没有正式的建模或收集的证据，以组织惯例如何出现，忍受和适应变化。本计画提出一个议程，结合博弈论分析与实验证据，研究组织惯例的产生、维持、适应性与最佳性。基线模型是一种新颖但简单的“收获游戏”，其中代理团队在几个时期内反复收获一个网格，其中包含所有过去选择的全部信息。该团队的目标是在允许的时间内，在网格上发现尽可能多的新结果，但不能相互通信。团队成员缺乏通信代理进行专业化，这使得通信困难，或者在通信不切实际的情况下，例如在紧急响应期间。在这样的环境中，有很容易识别的最佳例程，本研究探讨了理论和实验的例程出现，需要多长时间才能出现，他们是否稳定，一旦出现，如果代理人作出短期的牺牲，以促进最佳例程的出现。这项研究将建立在基线模型的基础上，并通过研究变体中的常规形成来扩展基线模型，其中1）没有关于过去选择的信息，2）决策任务的复杂性增加，3）增加更多的玩家，4）一些玩家有私人，收益相关的信息，可以自然地定位他们作为团队领导者和5）玩家能够在做出收割决定之前彼此通信。新的框架将扩大对组织成员如何在各种不同的环境中学习形成惯例的理解，这些环境都适合理论和实验评估。因此，将带来博弈论的分析和严谨的组织常规文献，迄今已研究的心理学和组织行为研究者的方法。博弈论框架允许人们评估常规形成偏离理性选择理想的程度和来源，以便更好地理解有限理性在常规形成中所扮演的角色。此外，组织惯例的数据很难测量或观察-使用实验经济学方法提出的实验测试，其中受试者根据自己的选择和同一团队其他成员的选择获得报酬，为研究组织惯例提供了一个很好的框架。实验设计，程序，数据和调查结果，从这一建议将免费提供，使其他研究人员可以建立在新的框架和教师可以教这种新的方法，在课堂上的组织惯例。

Organizational routines are persistent sequential interaction patterns among the members of an organization. Such routines are believed to be responsible for the efficiency advantages of organizations as structures for collective decision-making. Nevertheless, to date there has been little formal modeling or evidence collected as to how organizational routines emerge, endure and adapt to change. This project proposes an agenda for studying the emergence, maintenance, adaptability and optimality of organizational routines that combines game theoretic analysis with experimental evidence. The baseline model is a novel but simple "harvesting game" wherein teams of agents repeatedly harvest a grid over several periods with full information about all past choices. The team's goal is to uncover as many novel outcomes on the grid as possible in the time allowed but without the ability to communicate with one another. The absence of communication proxies for specialization by team members that makes communication difficult or for settings where communication is impractical, for example during an emergency response. In such environments there are easily identifiable optimal routines and this study examines both theoretically and experimentally which routines emerge, how long it takes them to emerge, whether they are stable once they emerge, and if agents make short-run sacrifices in the interest of promoting the emergence of optimal routines. This research will build upon and extend the baseline model by studying routine formation in variants where 1) there is no information about past choices, 2) the complexity of the decision task is increased, 3) more players are added, 4) some players have private, payoff-relevant information that may naturally position them as team leaders and 5) players have the ability to communicate with one another prior to making their harvesting decisions. The new framework will broaden understanding of how members of organizations learn to form routines in a variety of different environments that are all amenable to theoretical and experimental evaluation. Thus will bring game-theoretic analysis and rigor to the organizational routine literature which to date has been studied using the methods of psychology and organizational behavior researchers. The game-theoretic framework allows one to assess the extent and source of deviations in routine formation from the rational choice ideal so that there is a better understanding of the role played by bounded rationality in routine formation. In addition, data on organizational routines are difficult to measure or observe -- the experimental tests proposed using the methods of experimental economics, where subjects earn payments based on their own choices and the choices of other members of their same team, provides an excellent framework in which to study organizational routines. The experimental designs, programs, data and findings resulting from this proposal will be made freely available so that other researchers can build upon the new framework and instructors can teach this new approach to organizational routines in the classroom.