Looking After Number Two? Competition, Cooperation and Workplace Interaction

Tim Barmby (), John Sessions () and Alexandros Zangelidis
Additional contact information
Tim Barmby: University of Aberdeen

No 7803, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We build a model of worker interdependence in which two workers can either compete or cooperate and compare performance under either scenario to that of a single worker working in isolation. We show that whilst competition unequivocally reduces performance, cooperation may raise or lower performance. Employing a unique data set in which workgroups are comprised of either one or two workers, we are able to test explicitly for the presence of cooperation. We find empirical support for cooperative behavior.

Keywords: worker interdependency; absence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J33 J41 J54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2013-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2016, 131 (Part A), 166-182

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7803.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Looking after number two? Competition, cooperation and workplace interaction (2016)
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:dp7803

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 ().