Sharing the Fame but Taking the Blame: When Declaring a Single Person Responsible Solves a Free Rider Problem

Xinyu Li () and Wendelin Schnedler ()
Additional contact information
Xinyu Li: Department of Integrated Environmental Policy Analysis, PBL, 2500 GH The Hague, Netherlands
Wendelin Schnedler: Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Management Department, Paderborn University, 33098 Paderborn, Germany

Management Science, 2025, vol. 71, issue 10, 8252-8266

Abstract: Teams are formed because input from different people is needed. Providing incentives to team members, however, can be difficult. According to received wisdom, declaring all members responsible fails because real responsibility for team output “diffuses.” But why? Also, why and when does formally declaring one member “responsible” mean that this member can be attributed real responsibility? We offer a model that answers these questions. We identify when jointly declaring a team responsible results in reputation free riding. We show that declaring one person responsible can overcome this problem but only if all other team members are protected from being sanctioned.

Keywords: reputation free riding; collective punishment; formal and real responsibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.06567 (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:inm:ormnsc:v:71:y:2025:i:10:p:8252-8266

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().