SHARED KNOWLEDGE VS DIVERSIFIED KNOWLEDGE IN TEAMS

Suppose a team facing a symmetric payoff function can choose an inform ation structure and a rule of action for each of the team members and, then, each of the team members has to make observations and take acti ons without the possibility of communicating with the others. In the f ootsteps of Cremer (1990), the question is asked whether the informati on structure should be the same for each member (shared knowledge) or should vary across members (diversified knowledge). It is shown that a ream facing a supermodular payoff function should choose shared knowl edge while a team facing a submodular payoff function should choose di versified knowledge. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.