An economic approach to studying division of workload in collaborative search tasks

Abstract

This paper describes the current status of my doctoral research. In my work I am developing a novel approach to studying division of workload in collaborative tasks, with a particular focus on exploring division of labour in collaborative information seeking. My approach is based on the application of an economic game to the problem of workload division. Using this game as a theoretical and empirical model of labour division, my work aims to explore the way in which collaborators negotiate over their individual and collective workloads. I expect my research to shed new light on how people choose to negotiate and organise their individual workloads during collaborative search. It is hoped that this information could be used to inform the design of division of labour policies in collaborative systems, as well as to reason more generally about how people value workloads over other rewards and payoffs.