Workers cooperation within the firm: an analysis using small and medium size firms

Ricardo Flores-Fillol, Susana Iranzo () and Ferran Mañé Vernet

Working Papers from Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics

Abstract: We investigate the determinants of teamwork and workers cooperation within the firm. Up to now the literature has almost exclusively focused on workers incentives as the main determinants for workers cooperation. We take a broader look at the firm's organizational design and analyze the impact that different aspects of it might have on cooperation. In particular, we consider the way in which the degree of decentralization of decisions and the use of complementary HRM practices (what we call the .rm.s vertical organizational design) can affect workers'collaboration with each other. We test the model's predictions on a unique dataset on Spanish small and medium size firms containing a rich set of variables that allows us to use sensible proxies for workers cooperation. We find that the decentralization of labor decisions (and to a less extent that of task planning) has a positive impact on workers cooperation. Likewise, cooperation is positively correlated to many of the HRM practices that seem to favor workers'interaction the most. We also confirm the previous finding that collaborative efforts respond positively to pay incentives, and particularly, to group or company incentives.

Keywords: Treball en equip; Incentius laborals; 331 - Treball. Relacions laborals. Ocupació. Organització del treball (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-hrm and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/2072/179606

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:urv:wpaper:2072/179606

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ariadna Casals ().