Fighting Noncooperative Behavior in Organizations: The Dark Side of Sanctions

Abstract

A common way to promote cooperative and collectively beneficial behavior in organizations is to sanction self-interested and collectively harmful behavior. Social science researchers recently focus more and more on the negative effects of sanctions. In particular, it is argued that sanctioning noncooperative behavior can undermine people's personal motives to behave cooperatively. In this chapter we argue that, in the decision to behave cooperatively, or in one's own self-interest, perceptions of other people's motives play an important role. In this chapter we discuss research on sanctioning systems in social dilemmas which shows that sanctioning noncooperative behavior undermines trust in others being motivated to cooperate. In a series of studies we show that the undermining of trust may lead to a general increase of noncooperation. Moreover, the newly developed “social trilemma” paradigm demonstrated that it may induce people to show self-interested behaviors they had not considered before. These negative effects of a sanctioning system are moderated by the trust people initially may have in their fellow group members’ cooperative intentions, in the sanctioning authority and by the way people regard authorities in general. Implications of these results for organizations are discussed.

Citation

Mulder, L.B., van Dijk, E. and De Cremer, D. (2006), "Fighting Noncooperative Behavior in Organizations: The Dark Side of Sanctions", Tenbrunsel, A.E. (Ed.) Ethics in Groups (Research on Managing Groups and Teams, Vol. 8), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 59-81. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1534-0856(06)08004-2