Say we want to try out new organizational structures. Zaine suggests that a game might be a good method. However rather than a game to test a specific method of organizing people, I’m going to make a game where different organizational structures can be pitted against each other and statistics about their operation over time can be collected to inform new organisation designs.
Some organizational structures that might be tested include Democracy, Futarchy, Control Markets, Histocracy, some form of Meritocracy and Direct Democracy.
The conditions under which organizations suffer from corruption of purpose more frequently are when the people inside the organization are generally selfish and only moderately interested in the goals of the organization. So it makes sense to concentrate on these sorts of conditions.
I will be using the terminology defined in this article to talk about different facets of an organization.
One other bit of terminology: Team, a group of players given an organizational structure to test.
Although to simplify things we shall ignore Stakeholders, unless they are strictly necessary, instead relying on how well the teams perform in the game as Feedback.
Social Condition Creation
In order to make people selfish we need at least an individual high score table. Also people should be anonymous, assigned their teams randomly and communication restricted between them so that they interact with each other like strangers. This would avoid camaraderie, team spirit and reputation management being organisational factors.
Game play
The design of the game is a tricky subject in itself.
It would need to be:
Interesting—so that people played it.
Deep—so that people with more skill did better and there wasn’t a dominant strategy.
Require team work—so that one person can’t do everything themselves.
It would be split into matches and rounds. Each match would create new teams randomly and be composed of a few rounds. Each round each team would be scored by the game acting as Feedback. Between rounds there would be elections for Democracies or auctions for Control Markets. Futarchies might be harder to fit in you would need a vote and then a period of actions being suggested by the leader and trading on the outcome of those actions.
A team vs team game would seem to be the best way forward, as creating an engaging game world would be too complex. Unless an existing game could be adapted (I’m thinking something like co-operative Dwarf Fortress).
Perhaps a space-based crew game would work. With people able to move a ship, fire weapons, scan areas, lay traps for other teams and communicate with them. Or perhaps a game with limited action points per team member. Maybe something space alerty but TvT.
Scoring
I envision the high score table being an average of how you do during each game, with people having to not be below a couple of standard deviations of the average number of games played to be ranked. You couldn’t play one game, ace it and retire, you would have to be consistently good.
Each organisation type would have a different scoring method and different high score tables.
Control Markets would naturally have the amount of funge acquired by a team member as a score.
Members of a Futarchy would have their remaining money as a score, perhaps scaled by the score of the team.
Democracies might allow the leader(s) to pick a percentage of the score acquired for a round to disburse to the general team members as an incentive for them to help out and pick a good leader, the rest being kept by the leader(s). Or more cynically the score for a democracy match would be the number of times you got elected. Perhaps both scores could be tracked.
Metrics
The simplest metric to collect would be which organization types did the best on average. But in depth information could be collected on why teams fail in different organization types. The reasons might include in such as lack of engagement, infighting or underhand sabotage. Actor behaviour over different organization types could be analysed.
Downsides
It is a pretty artificial setting, so even if one structure did well in the game, it might not do well in real life. When you add in Stakeholders or an external economy the dynamics may well change a lot.
Game for organizational structure testing
Say we want to try out new organizational structures. Zaine suggests that a game might be a good method. However rather than a game to test a specific method of organizing people, I’m going to make a game where different organizational structures can be pitted against each other and statistics about their operation over time can be collected to inform new organisation designs.
Some organizational structures that might be tested include Democracy, Futarchy, Control Markets, Histocracy, some form of Meritocracy and Direct Democracy.
The conditions under which organizations suffer from corruption of purpose more frequently are when the people inside the organization are generally selfish and only moderately interested in the goals of the organization. So it makes sense to concentrate on these sorts of conditions.
I will be using the terminology defined in this article to talk about different facets of an organization.
One other bit of terminology: Team, a group of players given an organizational structure to test.
Although to simplify things we shall ignore Stakeholders, unless they are strictly necessary, instead relying on how well the teams perform in the game as Feedback.
Social Condition Creation
In order to make people selfish we need at least an individual high score table. Also people should be anonymous, assigned their teams randomly and communication restricted between them so that they interact with each other like strangers. This would avoid camaraderie, team spirit and reputation management being organisational factors.
Game play
The design of the game is a tricky subject in itself.
It would need to be:
Interesting—so that people played it.
Deep—so that people with more skill did better and there wasn’t a dominant strategy.
Require team work—so that one person can’t do everything themselves.
Scoring
I envision the high score table being an average of how you do during each game, with people having to not be below a couple of standard deviations of the average number of games played to be ranked. You couldn’t play one game, ace it and retire, you would have to be consistently good.
Each organisation type would have a different scoring method and different high score tables.
Control Markets would naturally have the amount of funge acquired by a team member as a score.
Members of a Futarchy would have their remaining money as a score, perhaps scaled by the score of the team.
Democracies might allow the leader(s) to pick a percentage of the score acquired for a round to disburse to the general team members as an incentive for them to help out and pick a good leader, the rest being kept by the leader(s). Or more cynically the score for a democracy match would be the number of times you got elected. Perhaps both scores could be tracked.
Metrics
The simplest metric to collect would be which organization types did the best on average. But in depth information could be collected on why teams fail in different organization types. The reasons might include in such as lack of engagement, infighting or underhand sabotage. Actor behaviour over different organization types could be analysed.
Downsides
It is a pretty artificial setting, so even if one structure did well in the game, it might not do well in real life. When you add in Stakeholders or an external economy the dynamics may well change a lot.
Comments and ideas appreciated!