Game Theory and Team Performance
I had came across this word Game Theory when I was taking course of Operations Research at IIT Kanpur but at that point of time I only gave attention from academic point of view and after having a basic understanding of it I moved on.
Almost half a year later I watched Beautiful Mind and got flavor of importance Game Theory in economics and mathematics. Recently I downloaded two lecture notes from University of Penn and MIT and then started going through it.
Suddenly I realized that Game Theory can also be applied in team performance when number players may be from 2 to N and number of Games can also be N where N is any positive integer. Any team is good as the members of the team. Performance of individuals, definitely has impact on overall performance of the team. It is given that all the members in a team may not be at same level of experience, knowledge. Their personality may be different. But, all the members are tied together with a common team goal and the out come is function of efforts of everyone. It is in individual's as well as team's interests to sincerely perform the responsibility. There are different possible scenarios in the team game
1. Even if one is not performing his duty it can take down everyone. For example, Crews running ship in the ocean. There are numerous research done on game of war as as zero sum game.Let's look at game of war in different perspective. A war is between two groups (Countries/Terrorists etc). There is high probability of loss if in a member in the team is not putting up his sincere effort. If everyone holds there fort during a war, it is unlikely to lose assuming that resources are infinite. A damage to one person leads to penetration of enemy in your court yard. I am making an assumption that both side in the war are matched in terms of ammunition, man power and bravery. I know this is not a fair assumption. And that's the reason weapon business is flourishing so much.
2. In a Team Game, the overall outcome will not be best possible outcome if any member's performance is sub-optimal. Every individual if they can deliver their best, outcome is best. Also, if one member is performing not good, another member can compliment and manage the situation. In a team game, if overall outcome is best, whole team is rewarded but if to manage someones inefficiency and laconic attitude is managed by another member, second member expects a kind of reward or appreciation. Lack of rewards can lead to more worse performance as nobody would like to take extra responsibility and ownership to their own responsibility will not be optimal.
My above thoughts provides opportunity to study team performance as a team game. This might be helpful in building high performance team to accomplish any objective.
thanks
Lokendra
Almost half a year later I watched Beautiful Mind and got flavor of importance Game Theory in economics and mathematics. Recently I downloaded two lecture notes from University of Penn and MIT and then started going through it.
Suddenly I realized that Game Theory can also be applied in team performance when number players may be from 2 to N and number of Games can also be N where N is any positive integer. Any team is good as the members of the team. Performance of individuals, definitely has impact on overall performance of the team. It is given that all the members in a team may not be at same level of experience, knowledge. Their personality may be different. But, all the members are tied together with a common team goal and the out come is function of efforts of everyone. It is in individual's as well as team's interests to sincerely perform the responsibility. There are different possible scenarios in the team game
1. Even if one is not performing his duty it can take down everyone. For example, Crews running ship in the ocean. There are numerous research done on game of war as as zero sum game.Let's look at game of war in different perspective. A war is between two groups (Countries/Terrorists etc). There is high probability of loss if in a member in the team is not putting up his sincere effort. If everyone holds there fort during a war, it is unlikely to lose assuming that resources are infinite. A damage to one person leads to penetration of enemy in your court yard. I am making an assumption that both side in the war are matched in terms of ammunition, man power and bravery. I know this is not a fair assumption. And that's the reason weapon business is flourishing so much.
2. In a Team Game, the overall outcome will not be best possible outcome if any member's performance is sub-optimal. Every individual if they can deliver their best, outcome is best. Also, if one member is performing not good, another member can compliment and manage the situation. In a team game, if overall outcome is best, whole team is rewarded but if to manage someones inefficiency and laconic attitude is managed by another member, second member expects a kind of reward or appreciation. Lack of rewards can lead to more worse performance as nobody would like to take extra responsibility and ownership to their own responsibility will not be optimal.
My above thoughts provides opportunity to study team performance as a team game. This might be helpful in building high performance team to accomplish any objective.
thanks
Lokendra
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