Revealing the Economic Consequences of Group Cohesion

Simon Gächter, Chris Starmer and Fabio Tufano

No 10824, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We introduce the concept of "group cohesion" to capture the economic consequences of ubiquitous social relationships in group production. We measure group cohesion, adapting the "oneness scale" from psychology. A comprehensive program of new experiments reveals the considerable economic impact of cohesion: higher cohesion groups are significantly more likely to achieve Pareto-superior outcomes in classic weak-link coordination games. We show that effects of cohesion are economically large, robust, and portable. We identify social preferences as a primary mechanism explaining the effects of cohesion. Our results provide proof of concept for group cohesion as a productive new tool of economic research.

Keywords: weak-link game; coordination; oneness; group cohesion; social relationships; experiments; real groups (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D03 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 59 pages
Date: 2017-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cdm, nep-exp and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published - revised version published online as 'Measuring 'Group Cohesion' to Reveal the Power of Social Relationships in Team Production' in: Review of Economics and Statistics , 06 February 2023

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Working Paper: Revealing the Economic Consequences of Group Cohesion (2017)
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