> what a good decision would be, but that is not the concept that needs explanation
It is subsumed in this work that good for baseball is winning games, and if you look at some of the references, it is taken for granted that there are ways to rank the possible results on some scale of efficiency or effectiveness. I would certainly question this.
Some of the references study the huge money-eating monster: healthcare. Here is a simple non-controversial problem -- look at all the healthcare systems in the world and rank the 10 best in order from best to worst by efficiency, effectiveness or ???
Even in baseball, there is no way to rank results. Some years, some teams have had very low winning percentages but much higher profitability than in other years. When I studied economics, some very good economists like Vernon Smith and Roger Noll took an interest in sports and particularly baseball. A standard assumption then was that there was an optimum winning percentage at which game attendance would be maximized, around 60% to 70%.
Baseball is a good example of the difference between short-term and long-term objectives, too. The winning vs losing equation is viciously zero-sum, and almost any innovation will be copied if it succeeds in the short-run. This leaves about zero long-term incentive to innovate. The real questions are: What kind of game do you want to play? What kind of game do people want to watch? What kind of job do you want to have? What kind of relationships do managers want to have with their unwashed workers? Which stakeholders will the firm respect?
It is subsumed in this work that good for baseball is winning games, and if you look at some of the references, it is taken for granted that there are ways to rank the possible results on some scale of efficiency or effectiveness. I would certainly question this.
Some of the references study the huge money-eating monster: healthcare. Here is a simple non-controversial problem -- look at all the healthcare systems in the world and rank the 10 best in order from best to worst by efficiency, effectiveness or ???
Even in baseball, there is no way to rank results. Some years, some teams have had very low winning percentages but much higher profitability than in other years. When I studied economics, some very good economists like Vernon Smith and Roger Noll took an interest in sports and particularly baseball. A standard assumption then was that there was an optimum winning percentage at which game attendance would be maximized, around 60% to 70%.
Baseball is a good example of the difference between short-term and long-term objectives, too. The winning vs losing equation is viciously zero-sum, and almost any innovation will be copied if it succeeds in the short-run. This leaves about zero long-term incentive to innovate. The real questions are: What kind of game do you want to play? What kind of game do people want to watch? What kind of job do you want to have? What kind of relationships do managers want to have with their unwashed workers? Which stakeholders will the firm respect?