Gift Exchange and Team Production

This week’s prompt asks us to delve into three readings in order to apply them to a team setting with gift exchange. While I typically like to structure my posts before I write them, this prompt has me wanting to do the opposite; so fair warning, this one may come out as a more stream-of-consciousness than normal. The team that I’ve been a part of that’s most fresh in my head is the cast and crew of the most recent theatrical production I was a part of. I served as the director of the show, and I’m somewhat trepidatious to use it as an example as a fellow classmate was a member of the production, but the recency should allow for specificity, which I will try to use to my advantage.

The first of these articles I read was the one on using game theory with children. Now, at the risk of offense, I compare this to my own recent experience, with the caveat of course that adults are not children. However, as I’m beginning to realize, some do like to act like them. For those unfamiliar with  the theatrical arts, the stereotype of diva personalities I’ve found tends to hold up quite well, and coincidentally, it produces hold up quite well. At points I essentially found myself in a labor hold up situation, where actors would refuse to come to rehearsals despite being called to do so, or would specifically mark out absences to schedule breaks for themselves, which lead to inefficiency in the production process, as scenes would be missing people on stage, and some rehearsals had to be cancelled outright. My initial process then was to double down: schedule more rehearsal time in order to make up for the lost time. Complaints increased, as did absenteeism. This reminds me a bit of the story of the Israeli daycares in the article on the Power of Altruism, where, although there was no economic incentive (I levied no fine), once I began to behave opportunistically, others did as well.

Finally, while product quality was still less than desired, and with little time for a turnaround, I decided on one last policy change: bargaining-based rehearsal cancellation. I set a bare minimum standard of acceptable output (x percentage of lines memorized, no glaring errors, everyone on stage when they should be), and then offered the gift of further rehearsal cancellation later in the week. Quality rapidly improved, and while I still would have liked the time that I had cancelled, it proved to be the better call. Here was the return to a common task, building upon mutual gift exchange.

One last point I want to make is more of a ponderance than anything else. The article on Getting the Rich to Share the Marbles offers studies which show people working for a common goal are more likely to express a tendency to shared outputs. In the realm of theatre on campus, I’ve tended to find this to be the case almost universally between actors: no matter what size part each person plays, the other actors are incredibly willing to share praise and accolades (a further ponderance: as amateurs who don’t do this for money, I wonder if this would change if true economic incentives were offered). Actors build very heavily on mutual exchange, it’s sort of the whole point of the trade. A scene breaks down if someone misses a line or a cue, and a certain trust is built up between scene partners to ensure no snags take place. Most actors I know are more than willing to put in extra effort should another actor require it: time outside of rehearsals to run lines, a deviation from the previous rehearsal plan, even more time in the rehearsal space all tend to float when it’s the actor who asks.

As a director, this is a courtesy which seems to drop away. Taking on that outside, managerial role seems to remove the sense of a shared input. Actors are much less willing to put in the requisite work, let alone extra work, should the director be the one asking for it. Of course, I may simply have not been very good at the job or particularly unlikeable or something like that, and that’s all the analysis there is to do here. However, for argument’s sake, I’ll assume there’s something to be said on the front of the psychology of gift exchange. I therefore postulate if this is perhaps because the inputs to the show that actors and directors give are drastically different, with one being perhaps less tangible. Therefore, it doesn’t feel as if one party is deserving of the outputs received. Or if it’s a matter of one party holding sway over the other that fosters an unwillingness to gift exchange. Either way, without the ability to create an economic incentive to fall back on when the moralistic one might fail, there is a very high likelihood of the type of hold-up I experienced to continue on to other productions.