Signaling cooperation

Matthias Heinz and Heiner Schumacher

No 120, SAFE Working Paper Series from Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE

Abstract: We examine what an applicant´s vita signals to potential employers about her willingness to cooperate in teams. Intensive social engagement may credibly reveal that an applicant cares about the well-being of others and therefore is less likely to free-ride in teamwork situations. We find that contributions in a public goods game strongly increase in a subject´s degree of social engagement as indicated on her résumé (and rated by an independent third party). Engagement in other domains, such as student or sports associations, is not positively correlated with contributions. In a prediction experiment with human resource managers from various industries, we find that managers use résumé content effectively to predict relative differences in subjects´ willingness to cooperate. Thus, young professionals signal important behavioral characteristics to potential employers through the choice of their extracurricular activities.

Keywords: signaling; public goods; labor markets; extracurricular activities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C92 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-gth, nep-hrm and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/128636/1/848737059.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Signaling cooperation (2017)
Working Paper: Signaling Cooperation (2016)
Working Paper: Signaling Cooperation (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:safewp:120

DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2696911

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SAFE Working Paper Series from Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().