Thursday, December 17, 2009

Does size matter in collective action?

I would like to suggest to the group that why don't we analyse cooperation and collective action by breaking it down to the smallest fragment and then studying each one of the aspects individually and then in relation to other factors.
To cite an example; heterogeneity of a group is an important determinant in arriving a conclusion which is beneficial to all the parties concerned. And so is size of the group. These factors though when looked at collectively pose a different set of problems.
So I think it would be a of a good learning value for each one of us if we can deal with each of the factors and the effect it has on group behavior.
To initiate, I would like to broach on the topic of the group size affecting cooperation among individuals. Prof. Sony had said about the game that we played in the class that had there been less people in the group there would have been less chances of defects i.e. of people moving away from cooperating.
"A standard argument put forward by Olson (1965) asserts that a larger group faces more
difficulties in achieving a common goal compared to a smaller group, because
of an aggravated free-rider problem: “unless the number of individuals in a
group is quite small ... rational, self-interested individuals will not act to
achieve their common or group interests”(Olson, 1965, p.2)."
For an example take the situation of a meeting. When the number of participants is large, the typical participant will know that his own efforts will probably not make much difference to the outcome, and that he will be affected by the meeting's decision in much the same way no matter how much or how little effort he puts into studying the issues. The decisions of the meeting are thus public goods to the participants (and perhaps others), and the contribution that each participant will make toward achieving or improving these public goods will become smaller as the meeting becomes larger.
Same situation may even happen in a classroom discussion.
One important thing to note here is that the partnership business has less partners and thus are less formalized however in terms of a joint stock company, since the shareholders are more, there is more formalization and each and every individuals action is governed by a set of rules and protocols. Had there been no such rules in a big company, the company would have not worked for even a day but the problem of size here is controlled by a set of rules which clearly states each person's responsibility and the income that he would take home.
Have many more points, but "size" of this post is a problem here. As, if the size of the post is too much people may be reluctant to start reading it and so our collective goal of understanding CAC may suffer !!!
Feedback Invited.

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