Are groups more rational than individuals? A review of interactive decision making in groups

Many decisions are interactive; the outcome of one party depends not only on its decisions or on acts of nature but also on the decisions of others. In the present article, we review the literature on decision making made by groups of the past 25 years. Researchers have compared the strategic behavior of groups and individuals in many games: prisoner's dilemma, dictator, ultimatum, trust, centipede and principal-agent games, among others. Our review suggests that results are quite consistent in revealing that groups behave closer to the game-theoretical assumption of rationality and selfishness than individuals. We conclude by discussing future research avenues in this area

Eighteen Months of Meeple Like Us:An Exploration into the State of Board Game Accessibility

The study of game accessibility to date has largely focused on the topic of accessibility within a video game context. Largely underexplored in the academic and professional literature is accessibility in the domain of tabletop games, especially those that are classified as part of the 'hobbyist' market. An ongoing series of research annotations, published on the blog Meeple Like Us, has been aimed at addressing this lack of attention. In this paper, the authors report on the work of the Meeple Centred Design project which to date has examined 116 board games for the accessibility issues they manifest and the lessons that can be learned for designers in this space. While the project has not achieved significant coverage of even a fraction of the available library of hobbyist games, currently numbering approximately one hundred thousand, it has discussed the issues with many of the most critically success and popular of these titles. This paper reports on results to date, methodology of the analyses, limitations of the project, and the future plans for work in this interesting game accessibility context

24-Karat or fool’s gold? Consequences of real team and co-acting group membership in healthcare organizations

Although theory on team membership is emerging, limited empirical attention has been paid to the effects of different types of team membership on outcomes. We propose that an important but overlooked distinction is that between membership of real teams and membership of co-acting groups, with the former being characterized by members who report that their teams have shared objectives, and structural interdependence and engage in team reflexivity. We hypothesize that real team membership will be associated with more positive individual- and organizational-level outcomes. These predictions were tested in the English National Health Service, using data from 62,733 respondents from 147 acute hospitals. The results revealed that individuals reporting the characteristics of real team membership, in comparison with those reporting the characteristics of co-acting group membership, witnessed fewer errors and incidents, experienced fewer work related injuries and illness, were less likely to be victims of violence and harassment, and were less likely to intend to leave their current employment. At the organizational level, hospitals with higher proportions of staff reporting the characteristics of real team membership had lower levels of patient mortality and sickness absence. The results suggest the need to clearly delineate real team membership in order to advance scientific understanding of the processes and outcomes of organizational teamwork

Integrating Values, Purposes, and Visions for Responsible Development

This chapter highlights a study showing that knowledge sharing and envisioning processes can have positive effects on human and social capital growth within a network. The chapter begins by arguing that a responsible development perspective can be more proactive approach than a sustainability perspective. Some actors (non-profit, public, and private) have achieved responsible development goals by integrating values, purposes and visions. More specifically, we conducted a study testing a methodology that can guide a process of building a strategic vision within a network with the goal of improving their responsible development orientation. The chosen methodology is “Participatory Action Research”. The implementation of the envisioning process was studied via quantitative/qualitative research tools. The methodology was tested in an official cross-country project funded by the European Commission. The project was selected as a best practice by the same European Union Commission. The study highlights the importance of envisioning processes in building social and human capital at the inter-organizational level and, in particular, in highly complex sectors such as those oriented towards improving social responsibility. In fact, work on the envisioning process itself represents an essential instrument for developing strategic objectives to be shared among actors within networks that intend to promote responsible development and improve their human and social capital. This bottom-up process of envisioning can also facilitate cultural interaction among community members, even in a cross-country context. This relevant “learning-by-interacting” experience, can create a growth process for the human and social capital of entire communities. The creation of social capital also promotes the development of shared knowledge and advances leading to the general understanding of common core objectives and appropriate ways of acting within the social system. The chapter ends with recommendations for future research