Industrialised, Integrated, Intelligent sustainable Construction - I3con

HANDBOOK 2 SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION
Game theory and collaboration construction
Strategic applications of Gaming theory and industrial relevance
Game theory is often used to demonstrate the philosophies of social and system dynamics in team
practices (Lane 1999). This has frequently been applied mainly on issues relating to conflict
management (McCain 1999). The focus of Gaming mechanisms is to predict possible outcomes of
behaviours when team members, also known as actors or players, choose to behave within limited
options in specific collaborative scenarios. Though commonly used in behavioural sciences, game
theory philosophies have been used to define construction situations, both as in life cycle processes
and intrinsic forms of cooperation in collaboration scenarios (Gruneberg and Hughes 2006;
Wübbenhorst 1986).
Rather than limiting the industrial application of game theory to cooperation and dispute scenarios
only, (Vaaland 2004) argued that a good way to explore collaboration scenarios is to mirror its basic
indices in non-dispute conventions. Therefore, as it is being popularly used in construction, it can also
be used to model other scenarios where cooperation is an ultimate factor. This is not only because
conflict explicates inverse relationships in cooperation, rather both concepts share identical variables
(i.e. limited IF probability options in cooperation scenarios). Other empirical studies by (Auger et al.
1998; Sheehan and Kogiku 1981) have established the relevance of three forms or lenses of Gaming
in construction, viz; (1) Prisoner’s Dillema (2) Pareto-Optima (3) Hawk-Dove. Some of the
conditionalities that underpin the relevance Gaming philosophies, as established from literatures and
considered for in this study, are:
(1) members actions definitely affect the team
(2) members have only two options as directions of actions – to cooperate in collaboration or not
(3) only two player-positions are feasible
A player cooperates with the ethos of integrated systems when such party complies with appropriate
estabslished frameworks that drive collaboration within project team members. Signficant evidence
which has already been reported in literatures (e.g. (Aranda et al. 2008a; Gu et al. 2008; Sher et al.
2009; Tse et al. 2005)) suggests that the drivers of collaboration include contemporary workable
skills, technological hardware, software and humanware to service all major precepts of BIM. A
player therefore defects when there is little or no resources and commitement to markedly service the
tools of cooperation to maximise collaboration.
Prisoner’s Dillema
Gaming lenses
In the Prisoner’s Dillema gaming scenario, players only have limited options as possible outomes in
two negative options. On the one hand, the limited options are such that both players can either
cooperate or refuse cooperation to reduce immediate risks and future effects that associate with those
imminent and definite risks. Moreover, the actions of each player is tailored towards maximising self
interest, with or without considering the implications of such actions on the other party. When both
players cooperate, they are both better off. However, when only one party cooperates and the other
does not, the party that defect gains more to the detriment of the party that cooperates. When both
parties refuse to cooperate, they both benefit on the basis of their individual interest, and this is
relative to what they have invested into their course of action.
101