Does Peer Monitoring Relieve Free-riding in Cooperative Groups? Evidence From a Real-Effort Experiment
Abstract
Teams, cooperatives and other organizations are vulnerable to free riding. Free riders work do not expend as much effort as they would were they to work alone because the benefits of their effort are shared with others, and... [ view full abstract ]
Teams, cooperatives and other organizations are vulnerable to free riding. Free riders work do not expend as much effort as they would were they to work alone because the benefits of their effort are shared with others, and vice versa, they can benefit from the fruits of coworkers’ effort without expending their own. This is a central economic prediction, based on the assumption of rational and self-interested individuals. Pro-social individuals are less likely to free ride.
We conduct an experiment with groups of four engaged in 10 rounds of three-minute real-effort task. We find that when mutual observation and feedback (mutual monitoring) are available individuals do not shirk as compared to individual work. In fact, they work even harder. We further find that the more pro-social individuals are the less likely they are to free ride.
Authors
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Avner Ben-Ner
(University of Minnesota)
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Yanmei Wang
(Northeastern University)
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Louis Putterman
(Brown University)
Topic Area
3. Governance, employment and human resource management
Session
D04 » Workplace, cooperation and empowerment (09:00 - Wednesday, 5th July, MORE 56)
Presentation Files
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