Group size effect on cooperation in one-shot social dilemmas II. Curvilinear effect

In a world in which many pressing global issues require large scale cooperation, understanding the group size effect on cooperative behavior is a topic of central importance. Yet, the nature of this effect remains largely unknown, with lab experiments insisting that it is either positive or negative or null, and field experiments suggesting that it is instead curvilinear. Here we shed light on this apparent contradiction by considering a novel class of public goods games inspired to the realistic scenario in which the natural output limits of the public good imply that the benefit of cooperation increases fast for early contributions and then decelerates. We report on a large lab experiment providing evidence that, in this case, group size has a curvilinear effect on cooperation, according to which intermediate-size groups cooperate more than smaller groups and more than larger groups. In doing so, our findings help fill the gap between lab experiments and field experiments and suggest concrete ways to promote large scale cooperation among people.Comment: Forthcoming in PLoS ON

Collective Turnover at the Group, Unit, and Organizational Levels: Evidence, Issues, and Implications

Studies of the causes and consequences of turnover at the group, unit, or organizational level of analysis have proliferated in recent years. Indicative of its importance, turnover rate research spans numerous academic disciplines and their respective journals. This broad interest is fueled by the considerable implications of turnover rates predicting broader measures of organizational effectiveness (productivity, customer outcomes, firm performance) as well as by the related perspective that collective turnover is an important outcome in its own right. The goal of this review is to critically examine and extract meaningful insights from research on the causes and consequences of group, unit, and organizational turnover. The review is organized around five major “considerations,” including (1) measurement and levels of analysis issues, (2) consequences, (3) curvilinear and interaction effects, (4) methodological and conceptual issues, and (5) antecedents. The review concludes with broad directions for future research

Internal Labor Markets Under External Market Pressures

This is the published version. Copyright 2014 by Industrial and Labor Relations Review.Through an empirical investigation of 11 Korean firms before and after the Asian financial crisis, the author examines the impact of increasing external market pressures on internal labor market (ILM) practices. In addition, the merits of ILMs are tested by capturing the reactions of white-collar managers within these firms. The author posits that 1) firms may desert ILM practices in the face of external pressures but do so in varying degrees, and 2) despite reduced values placed on firm-specific human capital in the marketplace, ILM practices continue to have merit in promoting consummate cooperation and delaying perfunctory cooperation. The findings generally support the hypotheses, and implications of these results for theory and practice are discussed

Electoral Alliances in a Multilevel Perspective

This thesis investigates the strategic dynamics of Electoral Alliances (EAs) in multilevel electoral systems, focusing on Western European democracies. EAs, defined as joint party lists, can be a critical tool for political parties aiming to achieve electoral success, influencing government composition, voter behavior, and the stability of party systems. Due to methodological nationalism the regional variation of factors affecting EA participation and the spillover in EA participation from regional to national elections have been mostly ignored by the literature. Two primary sets of hypotheses are tested: the first set explores the impact of regional electoral system permissiveness and party size, while the second set assesses the continuity of party strategies from regional to national elections. The study employs multilevel mixed-effect logistic regression models, analyzing these gaps on Belgium, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. Key findings indicate that higher regional electoral thresholds are positively associated with EA participation. Additionally, optimal conditions for EA involvement occur when a party's regional vote share in the previous national election is around 7%, typically few percentage points below the regional mean threshold to win one seat. Past participation in regional EAs also emerges as a significant predictor of future national EA engagement, also when parties previously collaborated with multiple allies. This thesis contributes to the understanding of electoral cooperation in multilevel contexts, highlighting the need to consider regional influences in national election strategies. It addresses gaps in current research and aligns with the call for a more integrated approach in coalition studies, emphasizing the importance of regional nuances in shaping national electoral outcomes.MasteroppgaveSAMPOL350MASV-SAP

Regional dispersion of cooperation activities as success factor of innovation oriented SME

In this paper, we analyze the relationships between different types of innovation and collaboration, given the varying geographical distance of the latter. The study is based on the data of the research project 'KompNet 2011 - Factors determining the success of regional innovation networks', which examines the innovation activities of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in and closely around Jena (Thuringia). The aim of this paper is to explore to what extent spatial reach of collaboration linkages determines innovation orientation and innovative behavior. That means: Innovation performance could be positively related to (a) to a high intensity of local collaboration, (b) the intensity of international collaboration or (c) neither regional nor (inter)national collaborations. In a first step we summarize the relevant literature which comprises aspects of our central subject under investigation. We additionally discuss the necessity of keeping in mind several control variables for theoretical and empirical reasons. In the following we present descriptive analyses relating to the regional reach of collaboration in general, the impact of collaboration on innovation and the links between the regional reach of cooperation and different forms of innovation, i.e. product, process, marketing and organizational innovation. In a final step we discuss the results of several regression models. We observe that there is no significant influence of the geographical variables on the innovative performance of SME. Therefore our findings suggest that innovative firms rely on collaboration partners at a variety of spatial distances. The results also show a significant and positive influence of the intensity of competition on the innovativeness of firms in all models. Furthermore product- and process innovations are created by firms with intensive cooperative activities to scientific institutions, while a wide variety of cooperation partners and a strong focus on quality leadership turns out to be important for the development of marketing- and organizational innovations. --cooperation,geographical reach,innovation,intensity of competition,marketing innovation,organizational innovation,process innovation,product innovation,quality leadership,regional dispersion,SME,spatial distance

Trust in everyday life

Although trust plays a pivotal role in many aspects of life, very little is known about the manifestation of trust and distrust in everyday life. In this work, we integrated several prior approaches to trust and investigated the prevalence and key determinants of trust (vs. distrust) in people’s natural environments, using preregistered experience-sampling methodology. Across more than 4,500 social interactions from a heterogeneous sample of 427 participants, results showed high average levels of trust, but also considerable variability in trust across contexts. This variability was attributable to aspects of trustee perception, social distance, as well as three key dimensions of situational interdependence: conflict of interests, information (un)certainty, and power imbalance. At the dispositional level, average everyday trust was shaped by general trust, moral identity, and zero-sum beliefs. The social scope of most trust-related traits, however, was moderated by social distance: Whereas moral identity buffered against distrusting distant targets, high general distrust and low social value orientation amplified trust differences between close vs. distant others. Furthermore, a laboratory-based trust game predicted everyday trust only with regard to more distant but not close interaction partners. Finally, everyday trust was linked to self-disclosure and to cooperation, particularly in situations of high conflict between interaction partners’ interests. We conclude that trust can be conceptualized as a relational hub that interconnects the social perception of the trustee, the relational closeness between trustor and trustee, key structural features of situational interdependence, and behavioral response options such as self-disclosure

Carbon Abatement Leaders and Laggards Non Parametric Analyses of Policy Oriented Kuznets Curves

We study the eventual structural differences of climate change leading ‘actors’ such as Northern EU countries, and ‘lagging actors’ - southern EU countries and the ‘Umbrella group’ - with regard to long run (1960-2001) carbon-income relationships. Parametric and semi parametric panel models show that the groups of countries that were in the Kyoto arena less in favour of stringent climate policy, have yet to experience a turning point, though they at least show relative delinking in their monotonic carbon-income relationship. Northern EU instead robustly shows bell shapes across models, which seem to depend on time related (policy) events. Time related effects are more relevant than income effects in explaining the occurrence of robust Kuznets curves. The reaction of northern EU to exogenous policy events such as the 1992 climate change convention that gave earth to the Kyoto era, and even the second oil shock that preceded it in the 80’s are among the causes of the observed structural differences.Carbon Kuznets Curves, Kyoto, Long Run Dynamics, Policy Events, Heterogeneous Panels, Cross-Section Correlation, Semi Parametric Models, Common Time Trends