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Cooperative Attitudes Among Workers of Social Cooperatives: Evidence from an Artefactual Field Experiment

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Abstract

We investigate cooperative attitudes among workers of nonprofit organizations by means of a novel empirical method combining experimental and survey data. Specifically, a two-player Prisoner’s Dilemma game is attached to a nationwide survey of social cooperatives in Italy. We experimentally manipulate social proximity of those interacting in the Prisoner’s Dilemma and the relative returns of mutual cooperation. We find that higher returns foster cooperation when social proximity of participants is low, while cooperation is not affected by a change in social proximity alone. Furthermore, social relations in the workplace and innate dispositional factors correlate with choices in the game. Our findings offer stimulating insights into the interplay between organizational features and workers’ motivations.

Résumé

Au moyen d’une nouvelle méthode empirique qui associe les données expérimentales et issues d’enquêtes, nous étudions les attitudes coopératives chez les travailleurs d’associations à but non lucratif. Précisément, un jeu du dilemme du prisonnier à deux joueurs est associé à une étude nationale portant sur les coopératives sociales en Italie. Nous manipulons expérimentalement la proximité sociale des personnes qui interagissent dans le dilemme du prisonnier et les récompenses relatives associées à la coopération mutuelle. Nous déterminons que des récompenses élevées encouragent la coopération quand la proximité sociale des participants est faible, alors qu’un changement de proximité sociale uniquement n’influe pas sur la coopération. De plus, on observe une corrélation des choix dans le jeu avec les relations sociales sur le lieu de travail et les facteurs dispositionnels innés. Nos découvertes donnent un aperçu intéressant de l’interaction qui existe entre les caractéristiques organisationnelles et les motivations des travailleurs.

Zusammenfassung

Wir untersuchen die kooperative Haltung von Mitarbeitern in Nonprofit organisationen mittels einer neuen empirischen Methode, bei der experimentelle Daten und Umfragedaten kombiniert werden. Hierzu wird einer landesweiten Befragung von sozialen Genossenschaften in Italien das für zwei Spieler vorgesehene Spiel Gefangenendilemma hinzugefügt. Wir manipulieren experimentell die soziale Nähe der am Spiel beteiligten Personen sowie die relativen Gewinne bei gegenseitiger Kooperation. Wir stellen fest, dass höhere Gewinne die Kooperation fördern, wenn die soziale Nähe der Teilnehmer gering ist, während sich eine Änderung der sozialen Nähe allein nicht auf die Kooperation auswirkt. Des Weiteren stehen soziale Beziehungen am Arbeitsplatz und immanente dispositionelle Faktoren mit den Spielentscheidungen in einer Wechselbeziehung. Unsere Ergebnisse bieten anregende Erkenntnisse über die Wechselwirkung zwischen Organisationsmerkmalen und den Motivationen der Mitarbeiter.

Resumen

Investigamos las actitudes cooperativas entre trabajadores de organizaciones sin ánimo de lucro mediante un novedoso método empírico que combina datos experimentales y de encuestas. Específicamente, se añade un juego de Dilema del Prisionero de dos jugadores a una encuesta a nivel nacional de cooperativas sociales en Italia. Manipulamos experimentalmente la proximidad social de aquellos que interactúan en el Dilema del Prisionero y los beneficios relativos de la cooperación mutua. Encontramos que los beneficios más elevados fomentan la cooperación cuando la proximidad social de los participantes es baja, mientras que la cooperación no se ve afectada por un cambio en la proximidad social solamente. Asimismo, las relaciones sociales en el lugar de trabajo y los factores disposicionales innatos se correlacionan con las elecciones en el juego. Nuestros hallazgos ofrecen ideas estimulantes sobre la interacción entre las características organizativas y las motivaciones de los trabajadores.

摘要

通过组合经验和调查数据的全新经验方法,我们调查了非盈利组织员工之间的合作态度。具体来说,双人囚犯的困境游戏被附加到意大利的全国社会合作调查。我们尝试操纵那些与囚犯的困境交互人员的社会亲密程度,以及共同合作的相对返回。我们发现,当参与者的社会亲密程度较低时,返回更高的增强合作;同时,合作不仅仅受社会亲密程度变化的营销。此外,工作场所和固有意向因素的社会关系与游戏的选择相关。我们的发现提供了组织特点和员工动机之间的相互作用的有益内幕。

ملخص

نحن نفحص المواقف التعاونية بين العاملين في المنظمات الغير هادفة للربح عن طريق منهج الرواية التجريبية التي تجمع بين البيانات التجريبية وإستطلاع الرأي. على وجه التحديد، مرفق لعبة معضلة السجين لإثنين من اللاعبين لإستطلاع رأي وطني للتعاونيات الإجتماعية في إيطاليا. نحن تجريبيا˝ نعالج ببراعة القرب الإجتماعي من المتفاعلين في معضلة السجين والعوائد النسبية للتعاون المتبادل. نجد أن عائدات أعلى لتعزيز التعاون عندما يكون القرب الإجتماعي للمشاركين منخفض، في حين لا يتأثر التعاون عن تغيير في القرب الإجتماعي وحده. علاوة على ذلك،عوامل العلاقات الاجتماعية في مكان العمل الأساسي الترتيبي ترتبط مع الخيارات في اللعبة. تقدم النتائج التي توصلناإليها نظرة ثاقبة لتحفيز التفاعل بين السمات التنظيمية ودوافع العمال.

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Notes

  1. The percentage is computed by the authors, relying on data from the National Income and Product Accounts (Table 1.3.5). Data are available at http://www.bea.gov/national/txt/dpga.txt.

  2. According to the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT 2008), 7,363 social cooperatives were operating in Italy in 2005. The great majority of organizations of this kind (i.e., 71.7 %) were established after 1991. Among active social cooperatives in 2005, 59 % were of type A and 32.9 % were of type B. The remaining organizations were either a mixture of the two types or networks of social cooperatives. Social cooperatives employed about 244,000 paid workers and about 34,000 volunteers. The value of goods and services produced by social cooperatives in 2005 was about 6.381 million Euros, with type A cooperatives accounting for 64.7 % of it.

  3. We would like to particularly thank Sara Depedri, Ermanno Tortia, Carlo Borzaga, Marica Manisera, Maurizio Carpita, and Gabriele Marconi for their valuable support.

  4. Specifically, Sect. 1 (questions 1–26) refers to the working conditions in the cooperative; Sect. 2 refers to the characteristics of current work (questions 27–39); Sect. 3 (questions 40–48) inquires about the hiring process and the working situation before being hired; Sect. 4 (questions 49–51) refers to future working perspectives; Sect. 5 (questions 52–57) asks about working attitudes; Sect. 6 (questions 58–63) is about relationships in the cooperative; Sect. 7 is addressed only to workers who are also partners of the cooperative; and Sect. 8 collects general background information about the responder.

  5. As illustrated by Carpita (2007), in the final sample, relative to the original random sample, cooperatives of type A and located in the North-West are overrepresented. Furthermore, workers of large organizations are overrepresented in the final sample relative to the original sample.

  6. A total of 2,405 workers answered the questionnaire in Northern Italy. A total of 1,846 observations are available for our study (see also Table 2). Thus, the response rate to the strategic interaction investigated here is about 77 %.

  7. Some payments were not actually dispensed because selected participants were not able to submit the original instruction sheet and thus, as stated in the instructions, were not eligible to receive the payment.

  8. According to a series of binomial tests, the rate of cooperation is always significantly greater than 50 %. This suggests that the tendency to cooperate is not the byproduct of a randomization over the two choices available in the game, but reflects a genuine preference for the cooperative action.

  9. A total of 229 individuals who are included in the analysis of choices in the game are omitted from the regression analysis because they did not provide some relevant piece of information in the questionnaire.

  10. Specifically, we test whether β(HighProx) + β(HighRet) + β(HighProx × HighRet) = 0 and we cannot reject the hypothesis at the conventional 5 % level (χ 2 (1) = 1.85, p = 0.174).

  11. Many respondents were reluctant to answer questions eliciting a judgment about the organization or their colleagues and this determined the low number of observations available for the estimation reported in column (2) of Table 4. A possible explanation for this, although direct support cannot be provided here, is that individuals with a negative perception of the working environment simply refused to provide answers that were critical of their organization. Thus, the estimation of column (2) of Table 4 may be biased by the fact that only opinions of individuals maintaining a positive perception of the organization are observed.

  12. Ruffle and Sosis (2007) present a conceptual framework distinguishing between the selection argument and the cultural argument as regards the decision to join a kibbutz in Israel. Burks et al. (2009) discuss an empirical identification strategy to disentangle between alternative explanations.

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  1. DEM-CEEL, University of Trento, Via Inama, 5, 38122, Trento, Italy

    Luigi Mittone & Matteo Ploner

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  1. Luigi Mittone
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  2. Matteo Ploner
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Correspondence to Matteo Ploner.

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Mittone, L., Ploner, M. Cooperative Attitudes Among Workers of Social Cooperatives: Evidence from an Artefactual Field Experiment. Voluntas 26, 510–530 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-014-9442-5

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