The (hidden) cost of work
Performing a task obviously certainly has costs attached to it. At least, you have to invest time into it. This goes along with opportunity costs as you can spend your time only once and you might not be able to do another, more valuable task.
A task may have a ripple effect as work done by one individual leads to further tasks required to be done by others. Therefore, the real cost of performing a task may not be easily visible to the requestor. For example, if a manager is not too familiar with the specialized field of an employee, he might not understand the full implications of a request (or an instruction).
This problem is accentuated in an increasingly "agile" work environment, where a worker may get requests from co-workers, who don't grasp the implications of a request. Anectodally speaking, this seems to be a great source of overhead in work meetings, where lots of discussions and explanations are necessary to make these implications transparent.
In some cases, this puts a worker in the dilemma where he has to make a choice to perform a task or not.
Assessment framework using game theory
A very naive understanding of game theory will be used here to resolve the worker's dilemma.
We assume that each possible action bears some cost to the involved parties. Benefits will not be considered in detail. We can safely assume that each outcome has some benefit to somebody. However, we also assume that in a work environment the perceived individual cost to doing work is usually higher than the (perceived) benefit to the organisation or other individuals within the organisation. Therefore, the real benefit will not be a significant factor in making decisions, at least in our case.
Usually the simplest examples for game theoretic considerations involve two parties. In this case, we will only consider the decision of a single party and its impact on all involved parties.
So maybe this is not even game theory after all, but I assure you, it is inspired by it.
An example for resolving a real-world dilemma
This may seem a trivial example to you, but at least it is based on a real-world experience.
Say a meeting has been set up with a number of executives. The meeting is scheduled, the participation commitments have been submitted. The meeting will start in a few days, it looks promising.
Now, Alice and Bob meet to prepare the details of the upcoming meeting. After the details have been settled, Alice asks Bob to update the meeting request to include a more detailed agenda.
This puts Bob into a dilemma.
The executive meeting request was sent by an executive's assistant, so Bob cannot update the contents by himself. He would have to approach the assistant and ask for the update.
If an update was sent out, this would render the participation confirmations invalid. Each executive would have to confirm again. They (or their assistants) might even consider the time slot for the meeting as "free" and book another meeting in the same slot, disregarding the fact that it's only a content update.
Before confirming the meeting (again), a participant would have to read the update. This requires time spent by the executive, without really adding value.
Instead, there is a risk that based on the updated content, the participant declines the meeting now. This may be desirable (so the executive can spend his time otherwise) or undesirable (it's hard to get all these executives together and one missing might significantly reduce the value of the meeting). At least, there is a risk of reduced benefit.
Based on these observations, it's not entirely clear to Bob if updating the meeting request message would be really helpful. Therefore, Bob considers declining Alice's request.
Simply saying "no" to Alice might not suffice. Alice may ask Bob for an explanation.
Bob may outright refuse this request, but that may lead to tensions between then, affecting their future work relationship. Alice may think that Bob is uncooperative, stupid, or simply rude.
Alternatively, Bob may engage in an explanation with Alice. Depending on Alice's own experience and understanding, Bob would have to invest more or less effort in explaining his decision. Bob may have certain other qualities, but possibly explaining things may not be his biggest strength (maybe he is of the impatient type). So an explanation may be overly time-consuming. If schedules are tight (as they usually are), there might not even be time for such an explanation.
All three of Bob's options are costly, to him and to the organisation. For simplicity, we ignore the benefit of the outcomes but just consider the costs.
The magnitude of the cost is only important to the respective party. We don't need to weigh, say, Alice's costs against Bob's. Therefore, we just state the cost for each party as a number between zero (no cost) and one (full individual workload).
The cost matrix for all the options looks like this:
┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ │
│ Option 1 Option 2 Option 3 │
│ (Comply) (Explain) (Do nothing) │
│ │
│ │
│ Alice 0 0.5 0 │
│ │
│ │
│ Bob 1 1 0.5 │
│ │
│ │
│ Organisation 1 0 0 │
│ │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
As you can easily see, option 1 is most attractive to Alice. From her point of view, the full (assumed) benefit can be realized without any cost. So it's easy for her to submit the request.
However, Bob has to do the full work: find time to talk to the assistant, provide a text for the update message, and bear some risk that the participation rate will be reduced.
For the organisation as a whole, this is also a costly operation. The participants have to review the update, and there is a risk that the meeting will be overbooked, thus reducing the benefit of the meeting itself.
Option 2 will burden Bob, since he would have to do all the explaining. Alice will have to invest at least a bit of effort understanding the explanation. In the worst case, Alice will insist and Bob needs to execute the task anyway, which will then lead to additional costs.
Option 3 has the lowest cost overall, but may affect Bob significantly. No time needs to be invested, but Bob's image in Alice's eyes might be reduced. Depending on Bob's risk awareness, this may or may not be acceptable to him. If his sense of responsibility for the organisation is greater that his risk avoidance, option 3 is the most attractive one.
Conclusion
Get lost, Alice.