Erfolgreiche Unternehmen zeichnen sich unter anderem dadurch aus, dass sie ihre Ge-schäftsprozesse den sich stetig verändernden Marktbedingungen permanent anpassen. Bei der Eroberung neuer Marktanteile gehören mittlerweile das Internet, Call Center, Helpdesks und andere Frontoffice -...

This paper examines the occurrence and fragility of information cascades in laboratory experiments.One group of low informed subjects make predictions in sequence. In a matchedpairs design, another set of high informed subjects observe the decisions of the first group andmake predictions....

Charness et al. (2007b) have shown that group membership has a strong effect on individualdecisions in strategic games when group membership is salient through payoff commonality.In this comment I show that their findings also apply to non-strategic decisions, even when nooutgroup exists, and I...

Even though decision-making in small teams is pervasive in business and in private life, littleis known about subjects’ preferences with respect to individual and team decision-making andabout the consequences of respecting these preferences. We report the results from anexperimental...

We examine the influence of team size on decision making in a beauty-contest experiment.Teams with four members outperform teams with two members and single personssignificantly, whereas the latter two types of decision makers do not differ.

We present a model where compensation within a workteam is determinedendogenously by the use of a rank-order tournament. Team memberscompete in their efforts for the right to propose the distribution of a prizewithin the team. The implementation of a proposal requires the approvalof other team...

Economics has devoted little attention so far as to whether the type of decision maker matters for economic decisions. However, many important decisions like those on monetary policy or a company’s business strategy are made by (small) groups rather than an individual. We compare behaviour of...

Seminal models of herd behaviour and informational cascades point out the existence of information negativeexternalities, and propose to destroy information in order to achieve social improvements. Although in the lastyears many features of herd behaviour and informational cascades have been...

We compared the behavior of groups and individuals in a two-person trust game. The first mover in this game, the sender, receives an endowment and can send any part of it to the responder; the amount sent is tripled, and the responder can then return to the sender any portion of the tripled sum....

In this experimental study we analyze one individual and three collective punishment rules in a public good setting. We present evidence and explanations for differences between the rules concerning punishment intensity, contribution and profit levels, as well as justice. Finally, we investigate...