Social Evolution, Corporate Culture, and Exploitation

Ekkehart Schlicht

No 651, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: It has been claimed that the market fosters selfishness and thereby undermines the moral basis of society. This thesis has been developed with an emphasis on market exchange. Everyday life is, however, predominantly shaped by interactions in the workplace rather than by shopping behaviour. This essay places emphasis on firm organisation, rather than market interaction, in moulding cultural traits. The argument starts with the observation that workers may perceive the employment relationship in two different ways, with different behavioural consequences. The first is the conventional incentive view. The other is the social exchange view. Implementing the social exchange perspective may be profitable for firms which organize complex tasks. This requires an appropriate corporate culture, governed by reciprocity, fairness and commitment. Such a culture can be viewed as a refined form of exploitation, however, as it involves creating an atmosphere of mutuality for profit. I shall argue against this thesis that the same attribution mechanisms which render corporate culture an effective management instrument shape the self-perception of management and engender true, rather than faked, social exchange. The market shapes firm organizations which foster mutualism rather than selfishness.

Keywords: corporate culture; theory of the firm; organizational citizenship; reciprocity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 B52 D21 D23 L14 L22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2002-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe and nep-pke
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - final version published in: Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 2004, 160 (2), 232-42

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp651.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Social Evolution, Corporate Culture, and Exploitation (2004)
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:iza:izadps:dp651

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().