IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v58y2012i7p1408-1421.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Power of Diversity over Large Solution Spaces

Author

Listed:
  • Marco LiCalzi

    (Department of Management, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, 30121 Venezia, Italy)

  • Oktay Surucu

    (Department of Economics and Finance, Università LUISS Guido Carli, 00198 Roma, Italy)

Abstract

We consider a team of agents with limited problem-solving ability facing a disjunctive task over a large solution space. We provide sufficient conditions for the following four statements. First, two heads are better than one: a team of two agents will solve the problem even if neither agent alone would be able to. Second, teaming up does not guarantee success: if the agents are not sufficiently creative, even a team of arbitrary size may fail to solve the problem. Third, defendit numerus : when the agent's problem-solving ability is adversely affected by the complexity of the solution space, the solution of the problem requires only a mild increase in the size of the team. Fourth, groupthink impairs the power of diversity: if agents' abilities are positively correlated, a larger team is necessary to solve the problem. This paper was accepted by Teck Ho, decision analysis.

Suggested Citation

  • Marco LiCalzi & Oktay Surucu, 2012. "The Power of Diversity over Large Solution Spaces," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(7), pages 1408-1421, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:58:y:2012:i:7:p:1408-1421
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.1110.1495
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1110.1495
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mnsc.1110.1495?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Collevecchio, Andrea & LiCalzi, Marco, 2012. "The probability of nontrivial common knowledge," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 556-570.
    2. Alan S. Blinder & John Morgan, 2008. "Do Monetary Policy Committees Need Leaders? A Report on an Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 224-229, May.
    3. Kristina Dahlin & L. Weingart & P. Hinds, 2005. "Team diversity and information use," Post-Print hal-00480406, HAL.
    4. Gary Bornstein & Tamar Kugler & Anthony Ziegelmeyer, 2002. "Individual and Group Decisions in the Centipede Game: Are Groups More “Rational” Players?," Discussion Paper Series dp298, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    5. Hong, Lu & Page, Scott E., 2001. "Problem Solving by Heterogeneous Agents," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 123-163, March.
    6. David J. Cooper & John H. Kagel, 2005. "Are Two Heads Better Than One? Team versus Individual Play in Signaling Games," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 477-509, June.
    7. Laura J. Kornish & Karl T. Ulrich, 2011. "Opportunity Spaces in Innovation: Empirical Analysis of Large Samples of Ideas," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(1), pages 107-128, January.
    8. Hema A. Krishnan & Alex Miller & William Q. Judge, 1997. "Diversification and top management team complementarity: is performance improved by merging similar or dissimilar teams?," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(5), pages 361-374, May.
    9. Laughlin, Patrick R., 1999. "Collective Induction: Twelve Postulates," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 50-69, October.
    10. Rubinstein, Ariel, 1993. "On Price Recognition and Computational Complexity in a Monopolistic Model," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(3), pages 473-484, June.
    11. Roland Bénabou, 2013. "Groupthink: Collective Delusions in Organizations and Markets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(2), pages 429-462.
    12. Karan Girotra & Christian Terwiesch & Karl T. Ulrich, 2010. "Idea Generation and the Quality of the Best Idea," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(4), pages 591-605, April.
    13. Davis, James H., 1992. "Some compelling intuitions about group consensus decisions, theoretical and empirical research, and interpersonal aggregation phenomena: Selected examples 1950-1990," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 3-38, June.
    14. Laughlin, Patrick R. & Bonner, Bryan L. & Miner, Andrew G., 2002. "Groups perform better than the best individuals on Letters-to-Numbers problems," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 605-620, July.
    15. Jonathon N. Cummings, 2004. "Work Groups, Structural Diversity, and Knowledge Sharing in a Global Organization," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(3), pages 352-364, March.
    16. Steven Postrel, 2002. "Islands of Shared Knowledge: Specialization and Mutual Understanding in Problem-Solving Teams," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 13(3), pages 303-320, June.
    17. Martin G. Kocher & Matthias Sutter, 2005. "The Decision Maker Matters: Individual Versus Group Behaviour in Experimental Beauty-Contest Games," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(500), pages 200-223, January.
    18. Lazear, Edward P, 1999. "Globalisation and the Market for Team-Mates," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(454), pages 15-40, March.
    19. Paulus, Paul B. & Yang, Huei-Chuan, 2000. "Idea Generation in Groups: A Basis for Creativity in Organizations," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 76-87, May.
    20. Blinder, Alan S & Morgan, John, 2005. "Are Two Heads Better than One? Monetary Policy by Committee," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(5), pages 789-811, October.
    21. Argote, Linda & Ingram, Paul & Levine, John M. & Moreland, Richard L., 2000. "Knowledge Transfer in Organizations: Learning from the Experience of Others," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 1-8, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Darío Blanco-Fernández & Stephan Leitner & Alexandra Rausch, 2023. "Interactions between the individual and the group level in organizations: The case of learning and group turnover," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 31(4), pages 1087-1128, December.
    2. Collevecchio, Andrea & LiCalzi, Marco, 2012. "The probability of nontrivial common knowledge," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 556-570.
    3. Meagher, Kieron & Prasad, Suraj, 2016. "Career concerns and team talent," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 1-17.
    4. Glenn Dutcher & Cortney S. Rodet, 2022. "Which two heads are better than one? Uncovering the positive effects of diversity in creative teams," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(4), pages 884-897, November.
    5. Marco LiCalzi & Lucia Milone, 2012. "Talent management in triadic organizational architectures," Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, in: Andrea Teglio & Simone Alfarano & Eva Camacho-Cuena & Miguel Ginés-Vilar (ed.), Managing Market Complexity, edition 127, chapter 0, pages 169-181, Springer.
    6. Dario Blanco-Fernandez & Stephan Leitner & Alexandra Rausch, 2022. "Interactions between the individual and the group level in organizations: The case of learning and autonomous group adaptation," Papers 2203.09162, arXiv.org.
    7. Daniels, David P. & Neale, Margaret A. & Greer, Lindred L., 2017. "Spillover bias in diversity judgment," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 92-105.
    8. Dar'io Blanco-Fern'andez & Stephan Leitner & Alexandra Rausch, 2022. "Dynamic groups in complex task environments: To change or not to change a winning team?," Papers 2203.09157, arXiv.org.
    9. John A Weymark, 2014. "Cognitive Diversity, Binary Decisions, and Epistemic Democracy," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 14-00008, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    10. Morvarid Rahmani & Guillaume Roels & Uday S. Karmarkar, 2017. "Collaborative Work Dynamics in Projects with Co‐Production," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 26(4), pages 686-703, April.
    11. P.J. Lamberson & Scott E. Page, 2018. "First mover or higher quality? Optimal product strategy in markets with positive feedbacks," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(1), pages 40-52, March.
    12. Dar'io Blanco-Fern'andez & Stephan Leitner & Alexandra Rausch, 2021. "Multi-level Adaptation of Distributed Decision-Making Agents in Complex Task Environments," Papers 2103.02345, arXiv.org.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marco Casari & Jingjing Zhang & Christine Jackson, 2016. "Same process, different outcomes: group performance in an acquiring a company experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(4), pages 764-791, December.
    2. Besedes, Tibor & Deck, Cary & Quintanar, Sarah & Sarangi, Sudipta & Shor, Mikhael, 2011. "Free-Riding and Performance in Collaborative and Non-Collaborative Groups," MPRA Paper 33948, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Marco Casari & Christine Jackson & Jingjing Zhang, 2009. "Do Groups Fall Prey to the Winner's Curse?," Department of Economics Working Papers 2009-18, McMaster University.
    4. Kocher, Martin & Strau[ss], Sabine & Sutter, Matthias, 2006. "Individual or team decision-making--Causes and consequences of self-selection," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 259-270, August.
    5. Königstein, Manfred & Ruchala, Gabriele K., 2007. "Performance Pay, Group Selection and Group Performance," IZA Discussion Papers 2697, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Boris Maciejovsky & Matthias Sutter & David V. Budescu & Patrick Bernau, 2013. "Teams Make You Smarter: How Exposure to Teams Improves Individual Decisions in Probability and Reasoning Tasks," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(6), pages 1255-1270, June.
    7. Nobuyuki Hanaki & Hideo Owan, 2013. "Autonomy, Conformity and Organizational Learning," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 3(3), pages 1-21, July.
    8. Martin Kocher & Matthias Sutter, 2007. "Individual versus group behavior and the role of the decision making procedure in gift-exchange experiments," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 34(1), pages 63-88, March.
    9. Baethge, Caroline, 2016. "Performance in the beauty contest: How strategic discussion enhances team reasoning," Passauer Diskussionspapiere, Betriebswirtschaftliche Reihe B-17-16, University of Passau, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    10. David J. Cooper & Matthias Sutter, 2011. "Role selection and team performance," Working Papers 2011-14, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    11. Francesco Feri & Bernd Irlenbusch & Matthias Sutter, 2010. "Efficiency Gains from Team-Based Coordination—Large-Scale Experimental Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1892-1912, September.
    12. Wolfgang Luhan & Martin Kocher & Matthias Sutter, 2009. "Group polarization in the team dictator game reconsidered," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 12(1), pages 26-41, March.
    13. Ronald Bosman & Heike Hennig-Schmidt & Frans Winden, 2006. "Exploring group decision making in a power-to-take experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 9(1), pages 35-51, April.
    14. Andrea Morone & Piergiuseppe Morone, 2012. "Are small groups Expected Utility?," Working Papers 2012/08, Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón (Spain).
    15. Axel Franzen & Sonja Pointner, 2013. "Giving according to preferences: Decision-making in the group dictator game," University of Bern Social Sciences Working Papers 2, University of Bern, Department of Social Sciences, revised 24 Jan 2014.
    16. Okano, Yoshitaka, 2013. "Minimax play by teams," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 168-180.
    17. Tamar Kugler & Edgar E. Kausel & Martin G. Kocher, 2012. "Are Groups more Rational than Individuals? A Review of Interactive Decision Making in Groups," CESifo Working Paper Series 3701, CESifo.
    18. Matthias Sutter & Martin Kocher & Sabine Strauß, "undated". "Individuals and teams in UMTS-license auctions," Working Papers 2007-23, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    19. Penczynski, Stefan P., 2016. "Persuasion: An experimental study of team decision making," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 244-261.
    20. Bingxu Fang & Ole-Kristian Hope, 2021. "Analyst teams," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 425-467, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    problem solving; bounded rationality; theory of teams; groupthink;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • C65 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Miscellaneous Mathematical Tools

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:58:y:2012:i:7:p:1408-1421. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.