Question

Most MBA students study in “teams.” Is there a potential tragedy of the commons within the study teams? Ask differently, what incentive problems do these groups have to overcome? How has your group sought to overcome the incentive problems? Why are teams generally small? What would be the consequence of doubling or tripling the size of study teams? How does team size influence the extent to which teams allocate "points" for members contributions to team projects?

Answer 1

When a given resource, such as education, in this case, is supplied without any measure, there is a common problem that all the students will look forward to self-benefits apart from common benefits, and a situation will come with an increase in students, that one will mean harm to the other for personal gain. So there is a potential of the tragedy of commons within the study teams. In this situation, social welfare is lacking, and the overall benefit to the team as a whole will deteriorate as more preference is given to personal benefits. For example, a part of the students may shift to the front side and would not let the others acquire their seat which will lead the others to lack the capacity to hear the lecture or see the board and will lead to a deficiency in their knowledge. This is a common problem in every economy with public or social goods where overconsumption leads to depletion of the resource and loss to other individuals.

There is a different kind of challenges faced by a team with the potential tragedy of the commons. The team has to overcome the psychological barrier at first followed by the institutional or structural and monitoring barrier. The group has to overcome the psychological barrier at first i.e., the thought of self-interest should be put off and a sense belonging towards the team is to be developed with a sense of togetherness and team education. The institutional and monitoring factors also serve as barriers, which involves no proper supervision or management of the group and biased institutional framework. In order to overcome the conflict, the member of the group should sacrifice self-interest and move towards a common goal.

The incentive problems can be solved by mutual agreement within the group i.e., if the group has become large and few members lack certain knowledge, notes or lectures in this case, then another member of the group should co-operate and help them with the same. This can also be solved by proper monitoring and management of the group with set regulations by the Institute for teamwork. The right and responsibility of each member of the team is to be communicated and maintained. The team should also indulge in sharing information and managing conflicts for a better study environment and teamwork.

The teams are kept small generally to increase team efficiency and avoid conflicts. This also facilitates increased productivity, better understanding among the team members, accountability for individual work, better recognition for performance and better management of the team. Smaller teams have the opportunity of recognition for every member, taking part in all the activities and being accountable for every responsibility along with teamwork. It is easier to control smaller teams by the management and proper supervision is also facilitated, which enables better learning and education.

With larger teams, there are a lot of problems that are faced while managing the teams. If the size of this team is doubled or tripled, there will be a huge conflict among the members of the team and lack of trust within the group. The members will divide themselves is sub-teams with a delegation of responsibility within the members, and sometime this might strengthen the conflict instead of resolution. A rivalry among the group members might arise out of this situation. All members would not take part in group activities in larger teams, and there will be an uneven distribution of work. It would not be possible to monitor each and every member of the group which will result in inefficiency and neglect on work. The group decisions will also go for a toss, as so many members will lead to majority-based decisions and there will remain a lot of unhappy members within the group who are not in favor of such decision. Thereby due to all such reason, larger teams will reduce productivity and efficiency with the emergence of conflict and tension within the team.

Team size influences the "points" allocated for member contributions to the project. Larger teams have lower "points" for a particular member and smaller teams have more "points" as the contribution of every member is more in a smaller team compared to a larger team. The participation of the members is more in smaller teams during every decision whereas larger teams hardly account for every opinion. A lot of members do not take part in decisions or activities in larger teams. Therefore we can conclude that for larger teams, the "points" for member contributions towards team project is less than smaller teams because the individual contribution is more in smaller teams than larger ones.