Cooperation in a Company: A Large-Scale Experiment

We analyze cooperation within a company to study the relationship between cooperative attitudes and financial and non-financial rewards. In an incentivized online experiment with 910 employees of a large software company, we elicit cooperative attitudes using a modified public goods game. Employees exhibit high levels of altruism and are conditionally cooperative. Linking experimental measures to rich administrative data, we document that more cooperative employees earn lower financial rewards within the firm. Instead, cooperation is associated with greater non-financial ‘compensation’ through peer recognition. These findings suggest that firms may foster corporate culture through non-pecuniary peer recognition to sustain cooperation for costly actions that are not directly observed by the principal.

Keywords: cooperation, social dilemma, field experiment, company

JEL Classification: C93, D23, H41, J31, J32, M52

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Deversi, Marvin and Kocher, Martin G. and Schudy, Simeon and Schwieren, Christiane, Cooperation in a Company: A Large-Scale Experiment (2020). CESifo Working Paper No. 8190, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3570293 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3570293