Trends and Research in the Decision Sciences: Best Papers from the 2014 Annual Conference

15. Delays in Projects: A Game Theoretic Study

—Milind Padalkar, Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode

—Saji Gopinath, Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode

Abstract

Project delays are common and expensive. Although mathematical models and stochastic frameworks have dominated the thinking of scholars, the role of human behavior in causing the delays has not received systematic attention. Traditional approaches treat human behavior as an exogenous variable and recommend creation of time buffers to accommodate its random effects. In this paper we use a game-theoretic framework to model human behavior as endogenous and show that delay-causing actions can have rational origins and identify tractable variables influencing such behaviors in ...