Competition Between Organizational Groups: Its Impact on Altruistic and Antisocial Motivations

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_B7473CC686A4
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Competition Between Organizational Groups: Its Impact on Altruistic and Antisocial Motivations
Journal
Management Science
Author(s)
Goette  L., Huffman  D., Meier  S., Sutter  M.
ISSN
0025-1909
Publication state
Published
Issued date
05/2012
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
58
Number
5
Pages
948-960
Language
english
Abstract
Firms are often organized into groups. Group membership has been shown empirically to have positive effects, in the form of increased prosocial behavior toward in-group members. This includes an enhanced willingness to engage in altruistic punishment of inefficient defection. Our paper provides evidence of a dark side of group membership. In the presence of cues of competition between groups, a taste for harming the out-group emerges: punishment ceases to serve a norm enforcement function, and instead, out-group members are punished harder and regardless of whether they cooperate or defect. Our results point to a mechanism that might help explain previous mixed results on the social value of punishment, and they contribute to understanding the sources of conflict between groups. They also point to an important trade-off for firms: introducing competition enhances within-group efficiency but also generates costly between-group conflict.
Keywords
Group decisions, cooperation, punishment, experiment, army
Web of science
Create date
15/09/2011 12:04
Last modification date
21/08/2019 6:14
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