The Game: the 'Evolution of Cooperation' and the New Frontier O

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

The Game: the 'Evolution of Cooperation' and the New Frontier O Master’s Course in Management and Governance Curr. Accounting and Management a.a. 2013/2014 THE GAME THE ‘EVOLUTION OF COOPERATION’ AND THE NEW FRONTIER OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT Author: Sara Trenti Supervisor: Prof. Luigi Luini Assistant supervisor: Prof. Lorenzo Zanni December 2014 I ABSTRACT This research is intended to investigate Cooperation and to understand how we can stop the self-interested behaviour of the individual from damaging the long-term interests of the group. Indeed, it is reasonable to think that following cooperation could lead to a mutual benefit for everyone. Nevertheless, reality is often controversial, as selfishness and individuality dominate. This create problems, because people and organizations fail to coordinate and to make optimal decisions. Because of the wide-ranging nature of the issue, we relied on a largely interdisciplinary theoretical base, grounding on a managerial, micro- economic, financial, epistemological and sociological literature and empirical cases. Our methodological approach grounds on the Thompson’s Epistemic-Ontological Alignment Theory (2011), by combining an Entitative Dimension (models of reality) and a Process Dimension (flux of interactions) to create a consistent and justifiable Mid-Range Theory. By departing from the Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Axelrod’s solution, Coordination Games and models of cooperation between firms, we then analysed flux of cooperative interactions and knowledge creation. We eventually found out that the so-called Future Game® and the Scenario Game represent a practical embodiment of the Evolution of Cooperation envisaged by Axelrod, and an important contribution to the Reformation of Cooperation envisaged by Sennett, to avoid the spread of the uncooperative self. They also constitute an example of the emerging practice of gaming, acknowledged as the New Frontier of knowledge management and managerial consultancy. This work wants to be a new beginning for a new research stream around cooperation and knowledge creation through gaming, and around the Scenario Game and the related Future Game®, to create a base for further discussions by departing from the insights produced by our analysis. II TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................ II INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................... VII 1. CHAPTER ONE – MODELS OF COOPERATION .................................................. 1 1.1. THE PRISONER’S DILEMMA GAME (1950S) ................................................................ 2 1.2. THE EVOLUTION OF COOPERATION ............................................................................ 3 1.2.1. The Axelrod’s Model (1981) ............................................................................ 4 1.2.1.1. TIT FOR TAT Strategy .................................................................................. 6 1.2.2. How to promote cooperation .......................................................................... 11 1.2.3. Other advances in Cooperation theory based on Prisoner’s Dilemma ........... 12 1.2.3.1. Labels, Stereotypes and Status Hierarchies................................................ 13 1.2.3.2. Reputation and Deterrence ......................................................................... 14 1.2.3.3. Regulation and Standards ........................................................................... 15 1.2.3.4. Territoriality ............................................................................................... 15 1.3. THE COMPLEXITY OF COOPERATION ........................................................................ 15 1.3.1. The Genetic Algorithm for strategies’ evolution .................................................. 16 1.3.2. Coping with Noise .......................................................................................... 18 1.3.3. Norms and Metanorms Game ......................................................................... 19 1.3.4. The Landscape Theory of Aggregation .......................................................... 22 1.3.5. Standard Setting .............................................................................................. 25 1.3.6. The Tribute Model .......................................................................................... 28 1.3.7. Disseminating culture ..................................................................................... 30 1.4. COORDINATION GAMES: FROM INDIVIDUALS TO TEAMS .......................................... 33 1.5. CONCLUDING REMARKS .......................................................................................... 36 2. CHAPTER TWO – MODELS OF COOPERATION BETWEEN FIRMS ............ 39 2.1. THEORIES ON INTER-FIRM COOPERATION ................................................................ 40 2.1.1. A Managerial perspective: Models on how corporate dynamics influence Cooperation ..................................................................................................................... 40 III 2.1.1.1. A Process Framework for the development of cooperative Inter- organizational Relationships ...................................................................................... 41 2.1.1.2. An Action Pattern Model of Inter-firm Cooperation .................................. 44 2.1.1.3. The Dimensions of Culture in a cross-border managerial perspective ...... 46 2.1.2. A Financial perspective: How Cooperation influences Corporate Value ....... 51 2.1.2.1. How to choose a compatible “companion”: The Balance Model .............. 51 2.1.2.2. Drivers for Value Increasing M&A ............................................................ 53 2.1.2.3. Causes for Value Reduction ........................................................................ 56 2.1.2.4. Research Joint Venture: a cooperative game for competitors.................... 59 2.1.3. An Industrial perspective: How Cooperation influences Industrial Dynamics 63 2.1.3.1. Direct Competitors and Substitutes ............................................................ 64 2.1.3.2. The threat of New Entrants ......................................................................... 72 2.1.3.3. Buyers and Suppliers: vertically related markets ....................................... 79 2.1.3.4. A step toward innovation: R&D Cooperation ............................................ 86 2.2. CONCLUDING REMARKS .......................................................................................... 89 3. CHAPTER THREE – COOPERATION AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: THE “GAME” ....................................................................................................................... 93 3.1. COLLABORATION AS FLUX OF INTERACTIONS .......................................................... 94 3.1.1. Cooperation, according to Sennett .................................................................. 95 3.1.1.1. Dialogics ..................................................................................................... 96 3.1.1.2. Cooperation Online .................................................................................... 98 3.1.2. Competition and Cooperation: the Fragile Balance ........................................ 99 3.1.2.1. The Spectrum of Exchange ........................................................................ 100 3.1.2.2. Reformation of Cooperation: the “artisanal” Workshop ......................... 102 3.1.3. Cooperation Weakened ................................................................................. 103 3.1.3.1. Inequality .................................................................................................. 104 3.1.3.2. The Social Triangle ................................................................................... 105 3.1.3.3. The Uncooperative Self ............................................................................. 106 3.1.4. Cooperation Strengthened ............................................................................. 107 3.1.4.1. The Craftsman ........................................................................................... 107 IV 3.1.4.2. Everyday Diplomacy ................................................................................. 109 3.2. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN COOPERATION ..................................................... 110 3.2.1. Nonaka and Takeuchi: a source of inspiration .............................................. 111 3.2.1.1. The knowledge-creating Company ........................................................... 113 3.2.1.2. Knowledge and Management .................................................................... 114 3.2.2. Organizational Knowledge Creation: from the Individual…to the Firm…and to the Network............................................................................................................... 117 3.2.2.1. Theory of (inter)organizational knowledge creation ................................ 117 3.2.2.2. Middle-up-down management process for knowledge creation ............... 122 3.2.3. Collaborative Knowledge and Communities of Practice .............................. 124 3.2.4. A step forward: “the Game” as a New Driver .............................................. 128 3.2.4.1. Gamification, Serious Games and Simulation .......................................... 128 3.2.4.2. What happens when “people are playing”? ............................................
Recommended publications
  • PDL As a Multi-Agent Strategy Logic
    PDL as a Multi-Agent Strategy Logic ∗ Extended Abstract Jan van Eijck CWI and ILLC Science Park 123 1098 XG Amsterdam, The Netherlands [email protected] ABSTRACT The logic we propose follows a suggestion made in Van Propositional Dynamic Logic or PDL was invented as a logic Benthem [4] (in [11]) to apply the general perspective of ac- for reasoning about regular programming constructs. We tion logic to reasoning about strategies in games, and links propose a new perspective on PDL as a multi-agent strategic up to propositional dynamic logic (PDL), viewed as a gen- logic (MASL). This logic for strategic reasoning has group eral logic of action [29, 19]. Van Benthem takes individual strategies as first class citizens, and brings game logic closer strategies as basic actions and proposes to view group strate- to standard modal logic. We demonstrate that MASL can gies as intersections of individual strategies (compare also express key notions of game theory, social choice theory and [1] for this perspective). We will turn this around: we take voting theory in a natural way, we give a sound and complete the full group strategies (or: full strategy profiles) as basic, proof system for MASL, and we show that MASL encodes and construct individual strategies from these by means of coalition logic. Next, we extend the language to epistemic strategy union. multi-agent strategic logic (EMASL), we give examples of A fragment of the logic we analyze in this paper was pro- what it can express, we propose to use it for posing new posed in [10] as a logic for strategic reasoning in voting (the questions in epistemic social choice theory, and we give a cal- system in [10] does not have current strategies).
    [Show full text]
  • Lecture Notes
    GRADUATE GAME THEORY LECTURE NOTES BY OMER TAMUZ California Institute of Technology 2018 Acknowledgments These lecture notes are partially adapted from Osborne and Rubinstein [29], Maschler, Solan and Zamir [23], lecture notes by Federico Echenique, and slides by Daron Acemoglu and Asu Ozdaglar. I am indebted to Seo Young (Silvia) Kim and Zhuofang Li for their help in finding and correcting many errors. Any comments or suggestions are welcome. 2 Contents 1 Extensive form games with perfect information 7 1.1 Tic-Tac-Toe ........................................ 7 1.2 The Sweet Fifteen Game ................................ 7 1.3 Chess ............................................ 7 1.4 Definition of extensive form games with perfect information ........... 10 1.5 The ultimatum game .................................. 10 1.6 Equilibria ......................................... 11 1.7 The centipede game ................................... 11 1.8 Subgames and subgame perfect equilibria ...................... 13 1.9 The dollar auction .................................... 14 1.10 Backward induction, Kuhn’s Theorem and a proof of Zermelo’s Theorem ... 15 2 Strategic form games 17 2.1 Definition ......................................... 17 2.2 Nash equilibria ...................................... 17 2.3 Classical examples .................................... 17 2.4 Dominated strategies .................................. 22 2.5 Repeated elimination of dominated strategies ................... 22 2.6 Dominant strategies ..................................
    [Show full text]
  • Cooperative Strategies in Groups of Strangers: an Experiment
    KRANNERT SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana Cooperative Strategies in Groups of Strangers: An Experiment By Gabriele Camera Marco Casari Maria Bigoni Paper No. 1237 Date: June, 2010 Institute for Research in the Behavioral, Economic, and Management Sciences Cooperative strategies in groups of strangers: an experiment Gabriele Camera, Marco Casari, and Maria Bigoni* 15 June 2010 * Camera: Purdue University; Casari: University of Bologna, Piazza Scaravilli 2, 40126 Bologna, Italy, Phone: +39- 051-209-8662, Fax: +39-051-209-8493, [email protected]; Bigoni: University of Bologna, Piazza Scaravilli 2, 40126 Bologna, Italy, Phone: +39-051-2098890, Fax: +39-051-0544522, [email protected]. We thank Jim Engle-Warnick, Tim Cason, Guillaume Fréchette, Hans Theo Normann, and seminar participants at the ESA in Innsbruck, IMEBE in Bilbao, University of Frankfurt, University of Bologna, University of Siena, and NYU for comments on earlier versions of the paper. This paper was completed while G. Camera was visiting the University of Siena as a Fulbright scholar. Financial support for the experiments was partially provided by Purdue’s CIBER and by the Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance. Abstract We study cooperation in four-person economies of indefinite duration. Subjects interact anonymously playing a prisoner’s dilemma. We identify and characterize the strategies employed at the aggregate and at the individual level. We find that (i) grim trigger well describes aggregate play, but not individual play; (ii) individual behavior is persistently heterogeneous; (iii) coordination on cooperative strategies does not improve with experience; (iv) systematic defection does not crowd-out systematic cooperation.
    [Show full text]
  • Norms, Repeated Games, and the Role of Law
    Norms, Repeated Games, and the Role of Law Paul G. Mahoneyt & Chris William Sanchiricot TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ............................................................................................ 1283 I. Repeated Games, Norms, and the Third-Party Enforcement P rob lem ........................................................................................... 12 88 II. B eyond T it-for-Tat .......................................................................... 1291 A. Tit-for-Tat for More Than Two ................................................ 1291 B. The Trouble with Tit-for-Tat, However Defined ...................... 1292 1. Tw o-Player Tit-for-Tat ....................................................... 1293 2. M any-Player Tit-for-Tat ..................................................... 1294 III. An Improved Model of Third-Party Enforcement: "D ef-for-D ev". ................................................................................ 1295 A . D ef-for-D ev's Sim plicity .......................................................... 1297 B. Def-for-Dev's Credible Enforceability ..................................... 1297 C. Other Attractive Properties of Def-for-Dev .............................. 1298 IV. The Self-Contradictory Nature of Self-Enforcement ....................... 1299 A. The Counterfactual Problem ..................................................... 1300 B. Implications for the Self-Enforceability of Norms ................... 1301 C. Game-Theoretic Workarounds ................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Games with Delays. a Frankenstein Approach
    Games with Delays – A Frankenstein Approach Dietmar Berwanger and Marie van den Bogaard LSV, CNRS & ENS Cachan, France Abstract We investigate infinite games on finite graphs where the information flow is perturbed by non- deterministic signalling delays. It is known that such perturbations make synthesis problems virtually unsolvable, in the general case. On the classical model where signals are attached to states, tractable cases are rare and difficult to identify. Here, we propose a model where signals are detached from control states, and we identify a subclass on which equilibrium outcomes can be preserved, even if signals are delivered with a delay that is finitely bounded. To offset the perturbation, our solution procedure combines responses from a collection of virtual plays following an equilibrium strategy in the instant- signalling game to synthesise, in a Frankenstein manner, an equivalent equilibrium strategy for the delayed-signalling game. 1998 ACM Subject Classification F.1.2 Modes of Computation; D.4.7 Organization and Design Keywords and phrases infinite games on graphs, imperfect information, delayed monitoring, distributed synthesis 1 Introduction Appropriate behaviour of an interactive system component often depends on events gener- ated by other components. The ideal situation, in which perfect information is available across components, occurs rarely in practice – typically a component only receives signals more or less correlated with the actual events. Apart of imperfect signals generated by the system components, there are multiple other sources of uncertainty, due to actions of the system environment or to unreliable behaviour of the infrastructure connecting the compo- nents: For instance, communication channels may delay or lose signals, or deliver them in a different order than they were emitted.
    [Show full text]
  • Lecture Notes
    Chapter 12 Repeated Games In real life, most games are played within a larger context, and actions in a given situation affect not only the present situation but also the future situations that may arise. When a player acts in a given situation, he takes into account not only the implications of his actions for the current situation but also their implications for the future. If the players arepatient andthe current actionshavesignificant implications for the future, then the considerations about the future may take over. This may lead to a rich set of behavior that may seem to be irrational when one considers the current situation alone. Such ideas are captured in the repeated games, in which a "stage game" is played repeatedly. The stage game is repeated regardless of what has been played in the previous games. This chapter explores the basic ideas in the theory of repeated games and applies them in a variety of economic problems. As it turns out, it is important whether the game is repeated finitely or infinitely many times. 12.1 Finitely-repeated games Let = 0 1 be the set of all possible dates. Consider a game in which at each { } players play a "stage game" , knowing what each player has played in the past. ∈ Assume that the payoff of each player in this larger game is the sum of the payoffsthat he obtains in the stage games. Denote the larger game by . Note that a player simply cares about the sum of his payoffs at the stage games. Most importantly, at the beginning of each repetition each player recalls what each player has 199 200 CHAPTER 12.
    [Show full text]
  • Prisoner's Dilemma: Pavlov Versus Generous Tit-For-Tat
    Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA Vol. 93, pp. 2686-2689, April 1996 Evolution Human cooperation in the simultaneous and the alternating Prisoner's Dilemma: Pavlov versus Generous Tit-for-Tat CLAUS WEDEKIND AND MANFRED MILINSKI Abteilung Verhaltensokologie, Zoologisches Institut, Universitat Bern, CH-3032 Hinterkappelen, Switzerland Communicated by Robert M. May, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, November 9, 1995 (received for review August 7, 1995) ABSTRACT The iterated Prisoner's Dilemma has become Opponent the paradigm for the evolution of cooperation among egoists. Since Axelrod's classic computer tournaments and Nowak and C D Sigmund's extensive simulations of evolution, we know that natural selection can favor cooperative strategies in the C 3 0 Prisoner's Dilemma. According to recent developments of Player theory the last champion strategy of "win-stay, lose-shift" D 4 1 ("Pavlov") is the winner only ifthe players act simultaneously. In the more natural situation of the roles players alternating FIG. 1. Payoff matrix of the game showing the payoffs to the player. of donor and recipient a strategy of "Generous Tit-for-Tat" Each player can either cooperate (C) or defect (D). In the simulta- wins computer simulations of short-term memory strategies. neous game this payoff matrix could be used directly; in the alternating We show here by experiments with humans that cooperation game it had to be translated: if a player plays C, she gets 4 and the dominated in both the simultaneous and the alternating opponent 3 points. If she plays D, she gets 5 points and the opponent Prisoner's Dilemma.
    [Show full text]
  • Repeated Games
    Repeated games Felix Munoz-Garcia Strategy and Game Theory - Washington State University Repeated games are very usual in real life: 1 Treasury bill auctions (some of them are organized monthly, but some are even weekly), 2 Cournot competition is repeated over time by the same group of firms (firms simultaneously and independently decide how much to produce in every period). 3 OPEC cartel is also repeated over time. In addition, players’ interaction in a repeated game can help us rationalize cooperation... in settings where such cooperation could not be sustained should players interact only once. We will therefore show that, when the game is repeated, we can sustain: 1 Players’ cooperation in the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, 2 Firms’ collusion: 1 Setting high prices in the Bertrand game, or 2 Reducing individual production in the Cournot game. 3 But let’s start with a more "unusual" example in which cooperation also emerged: Trench warfare in World War I. Harrington, Ch. 13 −! Trench warfare in World War I Trench warfare in World War I Despite all the killing during that war, peace would occasionally flare up as the soldiers in opposing tenches would achieve a truce. Examples: The hour of 8:00-9:00am was regarded as consecrated to "private business," No shooting during meals, No firing artillery at the enemy’s supply lines. One account in Harrington: After some shooting a German soldier shouted out "We are very sorry about that; we hope no one was hurt. It is not our fault, it is that dammed Prussian artillery" But... how was that cooperation achieved? Trench warfare in World War I We can assume that each soldier values killing the enemy, but places a greater value on not getting killed.
    [Show full text]
  • Role Assignment for Game-Theoretic Cooperation ⋆
    Role Assignment for Game-Theoretic Cooperation ? Catherine Moon and Vincent Conitzer Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA Abstract. In multiagent systems, often agents need to be assigned to different roles. Multiple aspects should be taken into account for this, such as agents' skills and constraints posed by existing assignments. In this paper, we focus on another aspect: when the agents are self- interested, careful role assignment is necessary to make cooperative be- havior an equilibrium of the repeated game. We formalize this problem and provide an easy-to-check necessary and sufficient condition for a given role assignment to induce cooperation. However, we show that finding whether such a role assignment exists is in general NP-hard. Nevertheless, we give two algorithms for solving the problem. The first is based on a mixed-integer linear program formulation. The second is based on a dynamic program, and runs in pseudopolynomial time if the number of agents is constant. However, the first algorithm is much, much faster in our experiments. 1 Introduction Role assignment is an important problem in the design of multiagent systems. When multiple agents come together to execute a plan, there is generally a natural set of roles in the plan to which the agents need to be assigned. There are, of course, many aspects to take into account in such role assignment. It may be impossible to assign certain combinations of roles to the same agent, for example due to resource constraints. Some agents may be more skilled at a given role than others. In this paper, we assume agents are interchangeable and instead consider another aspect: if the agents are self-interested, then the assignment of roles has certain game-theoretic ramifications.
    [Show full text]
  • Interactively Solving Repeated Games. a Toolbox
    Interactively Solving Repeated Games: A Toolbox Version 0.2 Sebastian Kranz* March 27, 2012 University of Cologne Abstract This paper shows how to use my free software toolbox repgames for R to analyze infinitely repeated games. Based on the results of Gold- luecke & Kranz (2012), the toolbox allows to compute the set of pure strategy public perfect equilibrium payoffs and to find optimal equilib- rium strategies for all discount factors in repeated games with perfect or imperfect public monitoring and monetary transfers. This paper explores various examples, including variants of repeated public goods games and different variants of repeated oligopolies, like oligopolies with many firms, multi-market contact or imperfect monitoring of sales. The paper also explores repeated games with infrequent external auditing and games were players can secretly manipulate signals. On the one hand the examples shall illustrate how the toolbox can be used and how our algorithms work in practice. On the other hand, the exam- ples may in themselves provide some interesting economic and game theoretic insights. *[email protected]. I want to thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through SFB-TR 15 for financial support. 1 CONTENTS 2 Contents 1 Overview 4 2 Installation of the software 5 2.1 Installing R . .5 2.2 Installing the package under Windows 32 bit . .6 2.3 Installing the package for a different operating system . .6 2.4 Running Examples . .6 2.5 Installing a text editor for R files . .7 2.6 About RStudio . .7 I Perfect Monitoring 8 3 A Simple Cournot Game 8 3.1 Initializing the game .
    [Show full text]
  • New Perspectives on Time Inconsistency
    Behavioural Macroeconomic Policy: New perspectives on time inconsistency Michelle Baddeley July 19, 2019 Abstract This paper brings together divergent approaches to time inconsistency from macroeconomic policy and behavioural economics. Developing Barro and Gordon’s models of rules, discretion and reputation, behavioural discount functions from behavioural microeconomics are embedded into Barro and Gordon’s game-theoretic analysis of temptation versus enforce- ment to construct an encompassing model, nesting combinations of time consistent and time inconsistent preferences. The analysis presented in this paper shows that, with hyperbolic/quasi-hyperbolic discounting, the enforceable range of inflation targets is narrowed. This suggests limits to the effectiveness of monetary targets, under certain conditions. The pa- per concludes with a discussion of monetary policy implications, explored specifically in the light of current macroeconomic policy debates. JEL codes: D03 E03 E52 E61 Keywords: time-inconsistency behavioural macroeconomics macroeconomic policy 1 Introduction Contrasting analyses of time inconsistency are presented in macroeconomic pol- icy and behavioural economics - the first from a rational expectations perspec- tive [12, 6, 7], and the second building on insights from behavioural economics arXiv:1907.07858v1 [econ.TH] 18 Jul 2019 about bounded rationality and its implications in terms of present bias and hyperbolic/quasi-hyperbolic discounting [13, 11, 8, 9, 18]. Given the divergent assumptions about rational choice across these two approaches, it is not so sur- prising that there have been few attempts to reconcile these different analyses of time inconsistency. This paper fills the gap by exploring the distinction between inter-personal time inconsistency (rational expectations models) and intra-personal time incon- sistency (behavioural economic models).
    [Show full text]
  • Cooperation in the Finitely Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma
    Cooperation in the Finitely Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma Matthew Embrey Guillaume R. Fr´echette Sevgi Yuksel U. of Sussex ................................ NYU ................................... UCSB June, 2017 Abstract More than half a century after the first experiment on the finitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma, evidence on whether cooperation decreases with experience–as suggested by backward induction–remains inconclusive. This paper provides a meta-analysis of prior experimental research and reports the results of a new experiment to elucidate how coop- eration varies with the environment in this canonical game. We describe forces that a↵ect initial play (formation of cooperation) and unraveling (breakdown of cooperation). First, contrary to the backward induction prediction, the parameters of the repeated game have a significant e↵ect on initial cooperation. We identify how these parameters impact the value of cooperation–as captured by the size of the basin of attraction of Always Defect–to account for an important part of this e↵ect. Second, despite these initial di↵erences, the evolution of behavior is consistent with the unraveling logic of backward induction for all parameter combinations. Importantly, despite the seemingly contradictory results across studies, this paper establishes a systematic pattern of behavior: subjects converge to use threshold strategies that conditionally cooperate until a threshold round; and conditional on establishing cooperation, the first defection round moves earlier with experience. Sim- ulation results generated from a learning model estimated at the subject level provide insights into the long-term dynamics and the forces that slow down the unraveling of cooperation. We wish to thank the editor, anonymous referees, James Andreoni, Yoella Bereby-Meyer, Russell Cooper, Pedro Dal B´o, Douglas DeJong, Robert Forsythe, Drew Fudenberg, Daniel Friedman, P.J.
    [Show full text]