Coordination in the network minimum game

Abstract Motivated by the problem of organizational design, we study coordination in the network minimum game : a version of the minimum-effort game where players are connected by a directed network. We show experimentally that acyclic networks such as hierarchies are most conducive to successful coordination. Introducing a single link to complete a network cycle may drastically inhibit coordination. Furthermore, acyclic networks enable resilient coordination: initial coordination failure is often overcome (exacerbated) after repeated play in acyclic (cyclic) networks.