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

在经济学、心理学和生物学的社会困境中，合作的概念的重要性是毋庸置疑的。我们关于合作的绝大多数经验知识都依赖于简陋设置中的实验室实验。然而，实验中的合作如何转化为组织内部的“现实”合作决策，以及外部制度如何解释“现实”合作，这些都是研究不足的话题。我们想要填补的文献中的空白涉及两个主要方面：(I)组织内的合作：我们研究组织(大公司)内的合作和合作规范，并将其与组织设定的激励结构和手头专业背景下的相关结果联系起来。我们在以下方面提供了新的证据：(A)合作在多大程度上使竞争环境中的团队在团队/组织的目标方面取得了或多或少的成功；(B)合作的个人是否更有可能得到提拔；(C)合作的个人是否更受下属和上级的喜欢；(D)在现实世界中，合作的态度/行为是如何与不同的激励机制相互作用的(S)；以及(E)组织内部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相关的疾病的影响。(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。到目前为止，这些措施大多是在实验室使用的，我们的研究通过评估实验室合作措施的外部有效性来实现第二个方法论目的。我们想了解(A)通过实验得出的合作水平如何与(现实世界中的)合作行为相关联；以及(B)通过使用实验经济学中的标准衡量标准，加上其他可观察变量，我们可以在多大程度上预测现实世界中的合作行为。来自实验实验室的合作行为测量的外部有效性还没有被系统地解决，特别是在工作场所的背景下。我们的项目将在一个独特的环境中回答这些研究问题。在与SAP S.E.的合作下，我们能够在多达1,000名员工中运行完全激励的在线实验。使用一个使得无法识别个人受访者身份的假名密钥，我们可以将导致合作行为和个人规范感知(包括一大组控制)的实验数据与公司的客观结果变量(团队凝聚力、对团队和公司的认同感、个人成功、晋升、激励计划等)联系起来。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的人。

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.