Organizations, Diffused Pivotality and Immoral Outcomes

Armin Falk and Nora Szech

No 1305, Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research

Abstract: This paper studies how organizational design affects moral outcomes. Subjects face the decision to either kill mice for money or to save mice. We compare a Baseline treatment where subjects are fully pivotal to a Diffused-Pivotality treatment where subjects simultaneously choose in groups of eight. In the latter condition eight mice are killed if at least one subject opts for killing. The fraction of subjects deciding to kill is higher when pivotality is diffused. The likelihood of killing is monotone in subjective perceptions of pivotality. On an aggregate level many more mice are killed in Diffused-Pivotality than Baseline.

Keywords: Morality; pivotality; experiment; organization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D1 D23 D3 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 p.
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Organizations, Diffused Pivotality and Immoral Outcomes (2013)
Working Paper: Organizations, Diffused Pivotality and Immoral Outcomes (2013)
Working Paper: Organizations, Diffused Pivotality and Immoral Outcomes (2013)
Working Paper: Organizations, diffused pivotality and immoral outcomes (2013)
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