On the comparison of spans and bisets

Abstract

We compare the bicategory of spans with that of bisets (a.k.a. bimodules, distributors, profunctors) in the context of finite groupoids. We construct in particular a well-behaved pseudo-functor from spans to bisets. This yields an application to the axiomatic representation theory of finite groups, namely a new proof and a strengthening of Ganter and Nakaoka's identification of Bouc's category of biset functors as a reflective subcategory of global Mackey functors. To this end, we also prove a tensor-monadicity result for linear functor categories.