Not just like starting over - Leadership and revivification of cooperation in groups
Brandts, Jordi (Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica)
Rott, Christina (School of Business and Economics. Department of Economics)
Solà Belda, Carles (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament d'Empresa)

Date:	2015
Abstract:	We conduct a laboratory experiment to study how, after a history of decay, cooperation in a repeated voluntary contribution game can be revived in an enduring way. Simply starting the repeated game over-a simple fresh start-leads to an initial increase of cooperation, but to a subsequent new decay. Motivated by cooperation decay in organizations we study the potential of three interventions of triggering higher and sustained cooperation, which take place at the same time as a restart. Surprisingly, we find that the detailed explanation of the causes of the decay in cooperation of Fischbacher and Gächter (Am Econ Rev 100:541-556, 2010) combined with an advice on how to prevent decay do not have an effect beyond that of just starting over. In contrast, a one-way free form communication message sent by the leader to the followers strongly revives cooperation. We find evidence that repeated free form communication by the leader further strengthens the reviving effect on cooperation. Combining the two previous interventions does not outperform the pure effect of communication. Our content analysis reveals that leader communication is more people oriented than the expert advice.
Grants:	Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad ECO2011-29847-C02-01 Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2009/SGR-820
Note:	The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10683-015-9468-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Leadership ; Cooperation ; Communication ; Experiments
Published in:	Experimental economics, Vol. 19 (september 2015) , p. 792-818, ISSN 1573-6938

DOI: 10.1007/s10683-015-9468-6
PMID: 28035191

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