Gradualism Builds Coordination

What is it about?

Coordination is essential in many organizational and economic activities. Still, achieving it effectively often requires certain strategies. One such strategy explored in this study is "gradualism" - starting with smaller tasks and slowly taking on bigger challenges within a group setting. Imagine starting with a small project, succeeding in it, and then moving to a slightly bigger project, and so on. This approach is thought to help groups achieve difficult tasks more easily, as success in smaller tasks can boost confidence and coordination for bigger challenges. This is not a new concept. In real-life settings, managers often assign new teams easier tasks first to ensure they can work well together before taking on more challenging tasks. Law enforcement and special military groups follow a similar approach, handling less critical situations before taking on high-stakes assignments. In the financial world, microfinance groups often start with small loans that grow in size as each loan is repaid successfully. In the entrepreneurial sphere, startups begin with minimal funding and then seek larger investments as they grow and prove their worth. Internationally, leaders use this gradual approach to address complex issues. One example is the 1997 Anti-Bribery Convention, which aimed to combat bribery in international business. Initially, the goal was broken down into steps to ensure all countries involved could participate effectively rather than introducing a full-fledged regulation at once. In our study, we tested this gradual approach in a controlled setting and found that groups using the gradualism strategy coordinated more successfully in high-stakes tasks than those that jumped into them right away. The study also suggests that previous successful experiences can influence group members' behavior and decisions in new groups. Two aspects make this approach effective. First, members have clear choices: they either fully commit to the task or opt-out. This clarity helps in making decisions. Second, starting with smaller tasks instills confidence and a belief in the group's ability, which carries over even when challenges grow. In simpler terms, tackling challenges step by step rather than all at once seems to be an effective way to foster teamwork and achieve success in group settings.

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Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

Why is it important?

With a behavioral game theory model and a randomized laboratory experiment, our study shows, for the first time, that gradualism can serve as a simple mechanism for promoting successful voluntary coordination. No previous study has identified which pattern of successive and exogenously set stake levels produces successful group coordination. We find strong evidence that gradualism can be a powerful mechanism in achieving socially optimal outcomes in group coordination. Gradualism significantly outperforms alternative paths, which shows that starting at a low-stake level and slowly growing the stake size are both important for coordination at later periods and at a substantial high-stake level. Our second finding relates to the spillover effect of coordination experience across social groups. Subjects treated in the gradualism setting are more likely to contribute upon entering a new group than subjects under different treatments. However, when these gradualism subjects find that their contributions have not been rewarded in the new groups, they reduce their tendency to contribute. Thus, the contribution behavior of the subjects treated in the gradualism regime and alternative regimes converges quickly. This result may have policy implications for ensuring efficient coordination outcomes when society members from diverse cultures and institutions merge. Our findings have broad implications for how managers can structure team assignments optimally before the team performs crucial high-stake tasks. Specifically, our central finding regarding gradualism underscores the role that supervisors and managers can play in leading teams to successfully coordinate in high-stake tasks and achieve higher productivity: teams should start in a low stake situation and then slowly move to tasks involving higher stakes. Our study demonstrates that gradualism can be a valuable tool for aiding high-stake coordination: a leader can start a group with an easier version of a task to provide reassurance and strengthen beliefs. Various management practices, from finance to law enforcement to venture capital, already exhibit this stylized gradualist feature of group coordination. In industries that significantly rely on effective coordination—such as consulting, information technology, engineering, or medical care (Gittell 2002, Faraj and Xiao 2006)—our findings point to a promising approach that teams can use so as to gradually work up to larger projects with bigger efforts and investments. In real-world teams, gradualism may be even more effective because it would also enable managers to swap out low-performing employees or disband dysfunctional teams if they fail to perform in low-stake situations before the stakes become too high. Therefore, managers can use the gradualism feature as a risk-mitigation strategy. Although there are other methods that managers can use to increase productivity in the organizations they oversee, our study provides one feasible and effective method that enhances the design of group training, improves overall team effort, and increases subsequent team productivity.

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