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

组织例程是组织成员之间持久的顺序交互模式。这些惯例被认为是组织作为集体决策结构的效率优势的原因。然而，迄今为止，很少有正式的模型或证据收集组织惯例如何出现，持续和适应变化。本项目提出了一个将博弈论分析与实验证据相结合的议程，以研究组织惯例的出现、维持、适应性和最优性。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网格，并获得有关所有过去选择的完整信息。该团队的目标是在允许的时间内发现尽可能多的网格上的新结果，但不能相互通信。缺少团队成员专门化的通信代理，这使得通信困难，或者在通信不实际的情况下，例如在紧急响应期间。在这样的环境中，存在容易识别的最佳例程，本研究从理论上和实验上考察了哪些例程会出现，它们出现需要多长时间，它们一旦出现是否稳定，以及代理是否为了促进最佳例程的出现而做出短期牺牲。本研究将基于并扩展基线模型，通过研究以下变量中的常规队形：1)没有关于过去选择的信息，2)决策任务的复杂性增加，3)增加更多玩家，4)一些玩家拥有私人的、与回报相关的信息，这些信息可能会自然而然地将他们定位为团队领导者，5)玩家在做出收获决策之前能够相互沟通。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，这些环境都适用于理论和实验评估。因此，将博弈论的分析和严谨性引入到迄今为止使用心理学和组织行为学研究人员的方法研究的组织常规文献中。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起的作用。此外，关于组织惯例的数据难以衡量或观察————使用实验经济学方法提出的实验测试，即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极好的框架。实验设计、程序、数据和结果将免费提供，以便其他研究人员可以建立在新的框架上，教师可以在课堂上教授这种新的组织方法。

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.