Modeling human resource allocation and coordination in a hierarchical team

A model of resource allocation and coordination in a hierarchical team is developed. A human team consisting of one leader and three subordinates processes multiple types of randomly arriving tasks. Each subordinate, having local information and sharing a limited amount of renewable resources with other subordinates, processes a subset of tasks that arrive in his/her subsystem. The leader has global information and coordinates subordinates´ task processing through announcing the resource transfer plans and carrying out resource transfers among the subordinates. The objective is to maximize the expected team reward. A decentralized approach that treats the leader and subordinates as individual decision-making entities is adopted. By incorporating the team´s computation and communication limitations, solution methodologies are developed for the leader and for the subordinates. Comparison of model predictions with human experimental results indicates that the model can predict human team decision-making and coordination processes