Consequences of Cooperation: Linking Cooperative Attitudes, Behavior and Outcomes in a Large-scale Experiment

合作的后果：在大规模实验中将合作态度、行为和结果联系起来

• 批准号: 343130421
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Martin Kocher
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lehrstuhl of Behavioral Economics
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2016-12-31 至 2020-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/343130421?language=en
• 关键词: Consequences; Cooperation; Linking; Cooperative; Attitudes

The importance of the concept of cooperation in social dilemmas in economics, psychology, and biology is unquestioned. The vast majority of our empirical knowledge on cooperation relies on laboratory experiments in parsimonious setups. However, how cooperation in an experiment translates to 'real'-life cooperation decisions within an organization and how 'real' life cooperation can be explained by exogenous institutions are under-researched topics. The gap in the literature that we want to fill concerns two main aspects:(I) Cooperation within an organization: We study cooperation and cooperative norms within an organization (a large company) and relate it both to the incentive structure set by the organization and relevant outcomes in the professional context at hand. We provide novel evidence on (a) the extent to which cooperation makes teams in a competitive environment more or less successful with respect to the goals of the teams/the organization; (b) whether cooperative individuals are more or less likely to be promoted; (c) whether cooperative individuals are liked more by their subordinates and superiors; (d) how cooperative attitudes/behavior interact(s) with different incentive mechanisms in a real-world setting; and (e) how or to what extent a cooperative culture within an organization shields individuals against stress and stress-related illnesses.(II) External validity of incentivized measures of cooperation: To elicit behavioral types with respect to cooperation, economists usually rely on validated experimental measures. As these measures so far have mostly been used in the laboratory, our study fulfills a second, methodological purpose by assessing the external validity of laboratory measures of cooperation in a lab-in-the-field setting. We want to learn (a) how experimentally elicited levels of cooperation correlate to cooperative behavior 'in the wild' (in the real world); and (b) to what extent we can predict cooperative behavior in the real world by using standard measures in experimental economics, augmented by other observable variables. The external validity of measures of cooperative behavior from the experimental laboratory has not been addressed systematically, in particular within a workplace context.Our project will answer these research questions in a unique setting. In collaboration with SAP S.E., we are able to run fully incentivized online experiments with up to 1,000 employees. Using an pseudonymization key that makes the identification of individual respondents impossible, we can link the data from the experiments that elicit cooperative behavior and individual norm perception (including a large set of controls) with objective outcome variables from the company (team cohesion, identification with the team and the firm, individual success, promotions, incentive schemes,...). We are the first to systematically address the context and consequences of cooperative behavior in a professional environment.

在经济学、心理学和生物学中，合作概念在社会困境中的重要性是毋庸置疑的。我们绝大多数关于合作的经验知识都依赖于在简陋的环境中进行的实验室实验。然而，如何在一个实验中的合作转化为“真实的”生活中的合作决定在一个组织内，以及如何“真实的生活中的合作可以解释外生制度是研究不足的主题。差距在文献中，我们要填补关注两个主要方面：（一）组织内的合作：我们研究合作和合作规范在一个组织（一个大公司），并将其与激励结构设置的组织和相关的结果在专业背景下在手。我们提供了新的证据：（a）合作在多大程度上使团队在竞争环境中更成功或更不成功，就团队/组织的目标而言;（B）合作的个人是否更有可能或更不可能获得晋升;（c）合作的个人是否更受下属和上级的喜欢;（d）合作态度/行为如何与现实环境中的不同激励机制相互作用;（e）组织内的合作文化如何或在多大程度上保护个人免受压力和与压力有关的疾病的影响。(II)激励合作措施的外部有效性：为了引出与合作有关的行为类型，经济学家通常依赖于经过验证的实验措施。由于这些措施到目前为止大多是在实验室中使用，我们的研究实现了第二个方法的目的，通过评估在实验室的合作措施的外部有效性在现场设置。我们想知道：（a）实验得出的合作水平与“野外”（真实的世界）的合作行为之间有何关联;（B）通过使用实验经济学中的标准测量方法，再加上其他可观察变量，我们在多大程度上可以预测真实的世界中的合作行为。实验室合作行为测量的外部有效性尚未得到系统的解决，特别是在工作场所的情况下。我们的项目将在一个独特的环境中回答这些研究问题。与SAP S.E.合作，我们能够与多达1，000名员工进行充分激励的在线实验。使用一个匿名化的关键，使个人的受访者的识别是不可能的，我们可以从实验中得到的数据，引发合作行为和个人规范的看法（包括一个大的对照组）与客观的结果变量从公司（团队凝聚力，认同与团队和公司，个人的成功，晋升，激励计划，.）。我们是第一个系统地解决专业环境中合作行为的背景和后果。