Cooperation in a Company: A Large-Scale Experiment

Marvin Deversi, Martin Kocher and Christiane Schwieren
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Marvin Deversi: University of Munich (LMU)

No 15, IHS Working Paper Series from Institute for Advanced Studies

Abstract: We analyze cooperation within a company setting in order to study the relationshipbetween cooperative attitudes and financial as well as non-financial rewards. In to-tal, 910 employees of a large software company participate in an incentivized onlineexperiment. We observe high levels of cooperation and the typical conditional con-tribution patterns in a modified public goods game. When linking experiment andcompany record data, we observe that cooperative attitudes of employees do not payoff in terms of financial rewards within the company. Rather, cooperative employeesreceive non-financial benefits such as recognition or friendship as the main rewardmedium. In contrast to most studies in the experimental laboratory, sustained levelsof cooperation in our company setting relate to non-financial values of cooperationrather than solely to financial incentives.

Keywords: cooperation; social dilemma; field experiment; company (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D23 H41 J31 J32 M52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 pages
Date: 2020-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hrm and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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https://irihs.ihs.ac.at/id/eprint/5330/ First version, 2020 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Cooperation in a Company: A Large-Scale Experiment (2020)
Working Paper: Cooperation in a Company: A Large-Scale Experiment (2020)
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