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The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of two key team‐based pay characteristics – namely reward allocation procedures (i.e. reward based on norms of equity, equality or some combination of the two) and incentive intensity – on both the amount and type of help given to one another among members of outcome‐interdependent teams.

A total of 180 undergraduate students participate in a laboratory simulation with a 2 × 3 experimental design. Servicing virtual “clients,” participants receive pre‐scripted requests for assistance from anonymous teammates. ANOVA and hierarchical regression analyses are used to test the hypotheses.

Relative to equity‐oriented group‐based pay structures, equality‐oriented pay structures are found to be associated with both significantly more help giving in general and more of the type of help likely to enhance group‐level competencies (i.e. autonomous help). Incentive intensity strengthens the effects of reward allocation on the amount (but not the type) of help giving.

While the short time frame of the simulation poses a significant threat to external validity, the findings suggest that team‐based compensation practices may provide organizational leaders with an important tool by which to shape critical, helping‐related team processes, with potentially important implications for both team learning and performance.

Managers interested in promoting capacity‐building and helping among team members should avoid allocating team rewards strictly on the basis of the individual contribution.

This paper provides the first empirical findings regarding how alternative modes of team‐based reward distribution may influence key group processes among members of outcome interdependent teams.

This paper aims to analyze challenges of subjective performance evaluation (SPE) and their effects on team performance. It focuses on discretionary bonus allocations in teams and challenges driven by cognitive biases on the superior or the employee side. This is important as efficient teamwork is a relevant source of competitive advantages in firms, and firms often rely on teams to coordinate various, mutually supportive organizational activities.

The author analyzes results that have recently been discussed in the literature and link them to each other to create a more holistic picture about potential performance effects of SPE. Based on the analyses, the author develops avenues for future research and point out open questions.

Exploring employees’ fairness perceptions in team settings in which there is no clear standard for a “fair” team bonus allocation, the author finds that perceived fairness of team bonus allocation may decrease under SPE because employees interpret the “fairness” of the bonus allocation from an egocentric perspective. Such decrease in perceived fairness can eventually even lead to decreased team performance. Likewise, on the superior side, more complex, but highly relevant team can cause cognitive biases of superiors in assessing employee performance, thereby decreasing the potentially positive effects of SPE on team performance.

This paper contributes to the literature by analyzing recently discovered challenges of SPE in teams and linking them to each other to draw more general conclusions about the performance effects of SPE. For practice, my findings imply that firms may want to be cautious when evaluating the potential effects of SPE – as it is made by human beings with their cognitive biases. For research, the paper opens up new research possibilities and points out open questions.

Professional sports teams employ highly paid managers and coaches to train players and make tactical and strategic team decisions. A large literature analyzes the impact of manager decisions on team outcomes. Empirical analysis of manager decisions requires a quantifiable proxy variable for manager decisions. Previous research focused on manager dismissals, tenure on teams, the number of substitutions made in games or the number of healthy players on rosters held out of games for rest, generally finding small positive impacts of manager decisions on team success.

The authors quantify manager decisions by developing a novel measure of game-specific coaching decisions: the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) of playing-time across players on a team roster over the course of a season.

Evidence from two-way fixed effects regression models explaining observed variation in National Basketball Association team winning percentage over the 1999–2000 to 2018–2019 seasons show a significant association between managers’ allocation of playing time and team success. A one standard deviation change in playing-time HHI that reflects a flattened distribution of player talent is associated with between one and two additional wins per season, holding the talent of players on the team roster constant. Heterogeneity exists in the impact across teams with different player talent.

This is one of the first papers to examine playing-time concentration in the NBA. The results are important for understanding how managerial decisions about resource allocation lead to sustained competitive advantage. Linking coaching decisions to wins can help teams to better promote this core product.

The purpose of this paper is to present a novel approach to coordination of multi‐agent teams, and in particular multi‐robot teams. The new approach is based on models of organisational sociology, namely the concept of social networks. The social relationships used in the model that is presented in this paper are trust and kinship relationships, but modified for use in heterogeneous multi‐robot teams.

The coordination of a robot team is achieved through task allocation. The proposed task allocation mechanism was tested in the multi‐robot team task allocation simulation.

The social networks‐based task allocation algorithm has performed according to expectations and the obtained results are very promising. Some intriguing similarities with higher mammalian societies were observed and they are discussed in this paper. The social networks‐based approach also exhibited the ability to learn and store information using social networks.

The research focused on simulated environments and further research is envisaged in the physical environments to confirm the applicability of the presented approach.

In this paper, the proposed coordination was applied to simulated multi‐robot teams. It is important to note that the proposed coordination model is not robot specific, but can also be applied to almost any multi‐agent system without major modifications.

The paper emphasizes applicability of considering multi‐robot teams as socially embodied agents. It also presents a novel and efficient approach to task allocation.

Multi-robot coalition formation (MRCF) refers to the formation of robot coalitions against complex tasks requiring multiple robots for execution. Situations, where the robots have to participate in multiple coalitions over time due to a large number of tasks, are called Time-extended MRCF. While being NP-hard, time-extended MRCF also holds the possibility of resource deadlocks due to any cyclic hold-and-wait conditions among the coalitions. Existing schemes compromise on solution quality to form workable, deadlock-free coalitions through instantaneous or incremental allocations.

This paper presents an evolutionary algorithm (EA)-based task allocation framework for improved, deadlock-free solutions against time-extended MRCF. The framework simultaneously allocates multiple tasks, allowing the robots to participate in multiple coalitions within their schedule. A directed acyclic graph–based representation of robot plans is used for deadlock detection and avoidance.

Allowing the robots to participate in multiple coalitions within their schedule, significantly improves the allocation quality. The improved allocation quality of the EA is validated against two auction schemes inspired by the literature.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first framework which simultaneously considers multiple MR tasks for deadlock-free allocation while allowing the robots to participate in multiple coalitions within their plans.

In Australia, the A$2.2 trillion managed funds industry including the large pension funds (known locally as superannuation funds) are the dominant institutional property investors. While statistical information on the level of Australian managed fund investments in property assets is widely available, comprehensive practical evidence on property asset allocation decision-making process is underdeveloped. The purpose of this research is to identify Australian fund manager's property asset allocation strategies and decision-making frameworks at strategic level.

The research was undertaken in May-August 2011 using an in-depth semi-structured questionnaire administered by mail. The survey was targeted at 130 leading managed funds and asset consultants within Australia.

The evaluation of the 79 survey respondents indicated that Australian fund manager's property allocation decision-making process is an interactive, sequential and continuous process involving multiple decision-makers (internal and external) complete with feedback loops. It involves a combination of quantitative analysis (mainly mean-variance analysis) and qualitative overlay (mainly judgement, or “gut-feeling”, and experience). In addition, the research provided evidence that the property allocation decision-making process varies depending on the size and type of managed fund.

This research makes important contributions to both practical and academic fields. Information on strategic property allocation models and variables is not widely available, and there is little guiding theory related to the subject. Therefore, the conceptual frameworks developed from the research will help enhance academic theory and understanding in the area of property allocation decision making. Furthermore, the research provides small fund managers and industry practitioners with a platform from which to improve their own property allocation processes.

In contrast to previous property decision-making research in Australia which has mainly focused on strategies at the property fund investment level, this research investigates the institutional property allocation decision-making process from a strategic position involving all major groups in the Australian managed funds industry.

Studies of teamworking suggest that, for it to be successful, fundamental changes must take place in many aspects of an organization’s structure and operations. This study of the Inland Revenue reveals that only in a few aspects does its operation of teamworking follow this model. The range of work is little changed; employees exercise little in the way of new skills; they appear reluctant to adopt responsibility for the work of others; and the performance management system operates on the basis of individual performance. Nonetheless, teamworking appears to work in the Inland Revenue. It does so by having a team rather than an individual allocation of work, and by encouraging individual identity with the team target. This suggests that, although a limited version of teamworking exists, this might be all an organization needs. Thus what is needed is a more sophisticated understanding of teamworking, its objectives, and the relationship between the two.

Purpose – We outline a novel perspective on the role the allocation medium plays in how groups allocate resources fairly. Building upon recent research that demonstrates the unique norms invoked by the resource of money, we propose that what individuals’ judge to be a fair allocation principle among group members systematically varies as a function of whether the resource being distributed is money versus other resources that are allocated within organizations. In light of the existing research, we argue that an egalitarian allocation principle will be understood to be less fair when the norms of the market are invoked by the distribution of a resource that is a medium of exchange (e.g., money) rather than an in-kind good (e.g. food). We conclude by discussing the implications of identifying the unique properties of money for a wide set of literatures.

Approach – In this theoretical paper we review prior research examining contextual variables influencing allocation preferences and attempt to identify the different characteristics of money as a resource that might influence conceptions of fairness.

Value – This chapter offers a theoretical review of the relevant literature and will be of interest to scholars of social justice.

This paper aims to present a concise review on the variant state-of-the-art dynamic task allocation strategies. It presents a thorough discussion about the existing dynamic task allocation strategies mainly with respect to the problem application, constraints, objective functions and uncertainty handling methods.

This paper briefs the introduction of multi-robot dynamic task allocation problem and discloses the challenges that exist in real-world dynamic task allocation problems. Numerous task allocation strategies are discussed in this paper, and it establishes the characteristics features between them in a qualitative manner. This paper also exhibits the existing research gaps and conducive future research directions in dynamic task allocation for multiple mobile robot systems.

This paper concerns the objective functions, robustness, task allocation time, completion time, and task reallocation feature for performance analysis of different task allocation strategies. It prescribes suitable real-world applications for variant task allocation strategies and identifies the challenges to be resolved in multi-robot task allocation strategies.

This paper provides a comprehensive review of dynamic task allocation strategies and incites the salient research directions to the researchers in multi-robot dynamic task allocation problems. This paper aims to summarize the latest approaches in the application of exploration problems.

As the intensity of natural disasters increases, there is a need to develop policies and procedures to assist various agencies with moving aid to affected areas. One of the biggest limitations to this process is damage to transportation networks, in particular waterways. To keep waterways safe, aids to navigation (ATONs) are placed in various areas to guide mariners and ships to their final destination. If the ATONs are damaged, then the waterways are left unsafe, making it difficult to move supplies and recover from a disaster. The aim of this paper is to explore the effectiveness of pre‐positioning strategies for port recovery in response to a natural disaster.

A stochastic facility location model is presented to determine where teams and commodities should be pre‐positioned in order to maximize the number of ATONs repaired, given a constraint on response time. The first stage decisions focus on determining the location of resources. The second stage decisions consist of the distribution of supplies and teams to affected areas.

Results show the benefit of pre‐positioning and the value of coordination toward the responsiveness of restoring waterways. Furthermore, the relationship between resources, repair time, and response is characterized.

There has been extensive work addressing pre‐positioning as it relates to responding to the needs of populations affected by disasters. However, little has been done to explore pre‐positioning in the context of business recovery from severe weather events.