IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/cesptp/hal-01300137.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Cooperation and the Boundaries of the Firm: A Framed-Field Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Béatrice Boulu-Reshef

    (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

This paper studies the effect of firm boundaries on inter-individual cooperation in corporate settings. I conduct a framed-field linear public good game experiment in the natural environment of the workplace. I use information about the actual boundaries of two firms, which are a parent firm and its subsidiary. I document differences in the overall level of cooperation across the parent firm, its subsidiary, and an intra-corporate group that comprises players from both the parent firm and the subsidiary. In stark contrast to previous results, I find that cooperation is increasing over time within the parent firm, indicating that firms can foster stronger cooperation within their boundaries. In other treatments the standard declining cooperation is not rejected. Overall, I find higher levels of contribution to the public good relative to conventional laboratory experiments. I estimate the importance of individuals' identity and find that higher weight placed on identity is associated with higher contributions, but only within the parent firm. Higher levels of self-awareness can help explain patterns of cooperation within the boundaries of the firm.

Suggested Citation

  • Béatrice Boulu-Reshef, 2014. "Cooperation and the Boundaries of the Firm: A Framed-Field Experiment," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-01300137, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:cesptp:hal-01300137
    DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2512374
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:cesptp:hal-01300137. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.