When three’s a crowd: how relational structure and social history shape organizational codes in triads

Abstract

When members of an organization share communication codes, coordination across subunits is easier. But if groups interact separately, they will each develop a specialized code. This paper asks: Can organizations shape how people interact in order to create shared communication codes? What kinds of design interventions in communication structures and systems are useful? In laboratory experiments on triads composed of dyads that solve distributed coordination problems, we examine the effect of three factors: transparency of communication (versus privacy), role differentiation, and the subjects’ social history. We find that these factors impact the harmonization of dyadic codes into triadic codes, shaping the likelihood that groups develop group-level codes, converge on a single group-level code, and compress the group-level code into a single word. Groups with transparent communication develop more effective codes, while acyclic triads composed of strangers are more likely to use multiple dyadic codes, which are less efficient than group-level codes. Groups of strangers put into acyclic configurations appear to have more difficulty establishing “ground rules”—that is, the “behavioral common ground” necessary to navigate acyclic structures. These coordination problems are transient—groups of different structures end up with the same average communication performance if given sufficient time. However, lasting differences in the code that is generated remain.

The design of emergence in organizations

“…Their relevance for understanding the complexity of organizations is no longer in doubt (Zelditch 1969;Falk and Heckman 2009). Kocak and Warglien (2020) take this approach to understand how design in the form of role differentiation, subjects' social history, and transparency of communication shapes the emergence of communication codes through sensemaking (learning). Codes are (shared) associations between labels and stimuli that allow actors to convey meaning and coordinate actions (Arrow 1974).…”

Shared language in the team network-performance association: Reconciling conflicting views of the network centralization effect on team performance

“…For scholars who study teams, the shared framework could be a transactive memory system (Lewis, 2003; Ren and Argote, 2011). For scholars who study learning, the framework could be a team code (Koçak and Warglien, 2020). Both sides agree that a shared framework facilitates coordination and learning.…”

“…Since a symbol can be described with many words and descriptions, a team must develop a shared language to distinguish the symbols and select the symbol they have in common (Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986:11; Selten and Warglien, 2007). A shared language is a team code (Koçak and Warglien, 2020) and is also a part of a transactive memory system (Moreland et al, 1996).…”