Managing Growth to Achieve Efficient Coordination in Large Groups

Several previous experiments using the minimum effort (weak link) coordination game reveal a striking regularity - large groups never coordinate successfully on the efficient equilibrium. Given the frequency with which large real-world groups, such as firms, face similarly difficult coordination problems, this poses an important question for economics and organization: Why do we observe large successfully coordinated groups of people in the real world when they are so difficult to create in the laboratory? This paper presents one reason. The experiments show that, even though efficient coordination does not occur in groups that start off large, efficiently coordinated large groups can be "grown." By starting with small groups that find it easier to coordinate, we can add people at a sufficiently slow rate to create efficiently coordinated large groups. This represents the first experimental demonstration of large groups regularly coordinated at high levels of efficiency