Teamwork and Rewards

               The New York Times article “How to Get the Rich to Share the Marbles” talks about how the reward mechanism is a crucial input that determines how much effort people put into doing a task. The example given for when children automatically share marbles is when the only way that either child gets rewarded is when both pull on a rope. When both pull, one child gets one marble and one child gets three marbles, and an overwhelming majority of study participants automatically share marbles to make the division equal. In other scenarios, such as when children don’t work for their marbles or when the children don’t have to work together to get their rewards, the students don’t feel compelled to share.

               My experience with group productivity is very similar – I generally feel that if a group has done the same amount of work, everyone should receive the same amount of credit. The biggest example of this is when the Actuarial Science Club executive board plans events. In cases where it’s known that I’m the one who was leading the event, I usually get most of the credit for whatever happened, even if I got a lot of help from other board members. Whenever I get all the credit for something that multiple people worked on, I feel immediately compelled to give them credit as well.

               I agree with other aspects of the study as well. When people have not put in the same amount of effort, I usually do not feel that they should receive the same amount of credit. A prime example is group projects for classes. While most of the professors assume that each group member will do the same amount of work, some factor in that some group members won’t put in much effort, and let students help determine the other group members’ grades by rating them. In most situations students give each group member equal credit for the project – you’re considered an awful person otherwise. I have been in a situation where I really felt that one group member did not deserve equal credit for a project, though, and in that case I did give him a bad rating. This group member gave us an incorrect e-mail address in class multiple times, using a different one each time. As a result, we never got a hold of him. Most of the time he didn’t come to class, so we couldn’t talk about the project in person. We showed up on the day of our final presentation having done his quarter of the project the night before since he didn’t do it, and assuming that he wouldn’t do the presentation. When our group was called, he came up to the front of the room with us and was silent during the entire presentation, but then fielded all the questions (incorrectly) before any of the other group members had a chance to respond. I was so infuriated that when the group evaluation forms came around, I gave him the worst possible score. He did get some credit for the project by default (which in my mind accounts for his efforts in actually coming to the presentation at all) but I couldn’t in good conscience let his complete lack of effort for the rest of the project slide.

               For me, it’s a nice concept that everyone will put in their fair share of the effort and will then get an equal share of the profits. However, in most group work the labor isn’t distributed equally. There aren’t many situations in real life where every single person has to put in the exact same amount of effort in order for everyone to get some reward – most times the reward is given based on aggregate group performance. If there were more situations where each individual on a team had to put in the same amount of effort, I think inequality would essentially disappear from these situations and many group conflicts would be resolved.