Coordinated Exploration: Organizing Search by Multiple Specialists to Overcome Mutual Confusion and Joint Myopia

Abstract

The coordination of specialists’ search efforts is one of the principal purposes of organization. Integration mechanisms enable joint search by allowing interdependent others to form shared mental models of the joint task. Whereas prior theory has concentrated on how integration mechanisms impact coordination among multiple specialists, they have not explored how integration impacts search. We call problems that emphasize both search and coordination as “problems of coordinated exploration”. Using a computational model, we find that coordinated exploration is not simple scaling up of individual search. Coordinated exploration is subject to two problems – mutual-confusion and joint-myopia – that arise only when epistemic interdependence is coupled with uncertainty. Agents’ attempts to reduce mutual-confusion automatically increases joint-myopia and vice-versa. Organizing coordinated exploration requires that agents’ mental model alignment balances the need for both coordination and search in order to avoid these two pathologies in joint search.