Search results

Literature on nontraditional firms has focused on behavioral differences with for-profit firms. Less attention has been given to the variations in behavior among nontraditional firms. This chapter examines differences across three types of Uruguayan nonprofit health care organizations.

This chapter draws on a unique dataset of Uruguayan health care organizations during the period 1982–1990, as well as interviews with doctors working in the three types of nonprofits during spring 2010. We use a simple OLS regression to identify differences in average behavior, and differences in reaction to a regulatory change.

The chapter shows that structure of stake holding and governance significantly affect behavior, even where many behaviors are highly regulated.

These findings highlight the importance of specifying governance structure when predicting behavior of nontraditional firms. Empirical tests of behavioral differences between traditional and nontraditional firms will be more meaningful if the governance structure of nontraditional firms is common and specified. A limitation of our study is our inability to control for the timing of degeneration of producer cooperatives. This would be one element of governance structure to consider in future data collection.

These findings highlight the need to avoid drawing broad policy conclusions from the behavior of a specific subset of nontraditional firms.

This chapter highlights the importance of carefully specifying stakeholder and governance structure when predicting behavior of nontraditional firms. It is of interest to anyone using a sample of nontraditional firms to test general hypotheses about their behavior.

Due to the increasing risk and uncertainty of construction projects, contractual flexibility has been considered as an effective tool to cope with emergences and to promote cooperation between owners and contractors. However, in practice, owners often failed to build an efficient cooperative relationship via contracts, resulting in a lacking of appropriate justice. Furthermore, due to a lack of available empirical research, the influence of contractual flexibility on the cooperative behavior of contractors requires further investigation. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap by conducting empirical research from the perspective of justice perception.

A theoretical model was developed and a series of hypotheses were proposed. Then, partial least squares structural equation modeling analyses were conducted on a sample of 188 respondents.

The results show that contractual content and executing flexibility both have a positive influence on the cooperative behavior of a contractor, which was partially mediated by distribution, procedural, and interactional justice perceptions. Moreover, content flexibility has a significant impact on all three types of justice perception, and the execution of flexibility has more impact on interactional justice compared to other justice perceptions.

The findings contribute to an improved understanding of how contractual flexibility affects the cooperative behavior of contractors, indicating that the owner could develop a fair exchange relationship through flexible contracting and motivation of the other party.

The paper emphasises the general relevance of social norms and social associations for cooperative behaviour in less or non‐social economic contexts, focusing in particular on economic laboratory experiments, and to illustrate the underlying psychological driving forces.

The argument focuses on the interplay between social norms, their psychological enforcement mechanism (cognitive dissonance) and context effects. Drawing on findings from both (social) psychology and experimental economics, it emphasises the relevance of social norms for cooperative behaviour also in less or non‐social environments as often created in economic laboratory experiments. Moreover, the conditions for cognitive dissonance effects to occur are summarised and the corresponding behavioural effects are both highlighted and exemplified by means of various examples including the analysis of a specific data set.

The discussion strongly suggests that the influence of common cooperative social norms is difficult to “anonymise away” in laboratory experiments or other less socially focused decision environments. Moreover, it provides a possible explanation for the occurrence of a variety of behavioural patterns often found in such settings, such as initially high but decreasing willingness to cooperate in social dilemmas.

Emphasising the far reach of social aspects in economic decision making, the discussion may help in the design of institutions as it illustrates a widespread source of non‐economic individual incentives.

The argument addresses the idiosyncrasies of individual cooperative behaviour in situations where economic incentives should hinder such behaviour. Adding to earlier arguments which explain such cooperation, for example, by reference to fairness concerns or inequity aversion, the present discussion emphasises in particular the specific psychological driving forces behind such behaviour. In doing so, it establishes a clear link to the research on cognitive dissonance in psychology.

The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of cooperative and competitive personalities on tacit knowledge sharing (TKS) by exploring the mediating role of organizational identification (OI) and the moderating role of perceived organizational support (POS) among Chinese employees.

Conducting a network survey of ordinary employees from Chinese listed companies (2019) as the research objects, the authors collect 298 valid samples for research. The authors apply confirmatory factor analysis to test the reliability and validity of the constructs, structural equation modeling to verify the direct effect and the PROCESS macro to test the mediating and moderating effects.

The results show that there is a positive relationship between cooperative personality (COP) and TKS, and there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between competitive personality (CMP) and TKS. OI plays a mediating role between COP and TKS, while POS plays a negative moderating role between COP and TKS.

This paper only takes Chinese employees as the research sample, and future research can make a cross-cultural comparison between the impacts of cooperative and competitive personalities on employees’ behaviors.

The results of this study suggest that enterprises should actively cultivate the COP of employees, and managers should refrain from intervening in the behaviors of employees with COP. At the same time, for employees with CMP, managers should guide them to control their competitive tendency at a reasonable level. The conclusions of this paper also suggest that managers should pay attention to the cultivation of employees’ OI.

This study plugs the gap in research on the impacts of cooperative and competitive personalities on TKS. It makes a contribution to the research development of COP and CMP and their influence mechanisms on employees’ behaviors. In addition, the negative moderating effect of POS on COP–TKS link verifies the correctness of Y theory. Studying the relationships among personality traits (cooperative and competitive personalities), cognition (OI) and behaviors (TKS), this paper makes a contribution to such a research stream.

The purpose of this study was twofold: first, to test to what extent a cooperative conflict management style can be related to attitudes, norms and perceived volitional control. Second, because conflict resolution is an activity that unfolds at the team level, the validity of the theoretical model was tested at the team level of analysis. The aim was to extend the understanding we have on antecedents of conflict management styles and to build a bridge between two different levels of analysis.

This was done by building on the theory of planned behavior, which, to the authors’ knowledge, has neither been related to organizational behaviors nor to small group dynamics. A questionnaire was distributed to subjects that have experienced working together in teams. In total, 131 team members (grouped in 33 teams) provided answers on the key concepts of the model.

First, perceived norms and high volitional control relate to individuals’ intentions to engage in cooperative conflict management activities, with intentions not mediating to role of norms on behavior. Second, at the team level, a high level of perceived norms relates to a higher occurrence of a cooperative resolution style. Additionally, high diversity on the attitudes over the value of this style negatively impacts its occurrence.

This study offers a cross-sectional image of an important process in the team. Additionally, relying on the subjects’ self-reports represents a limitation in the current study, considering the goal of the model is to predict behavior. Future research could address this, and additionally, consider team characteristics or individual traits that could add to the model of planned behavior.

This paper adds to the literature as an attempt the bridge individual level constructs team-level processes. Moreover, it provides evidence for potential antecedents of conflict management styles. This latter contribution can be relevant for practitioners as well, that could invest in the institutionalization of favored resolution style to benefit from it.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between conflict management styles (CMS) used by leaders and organizational identification of their followers as well as to test the mediating effects of psychological safety and employee voice on that relationship.

Data were collected on site from 1,023 employees in 13 multinational companies in Turkey. The mediating roles of psychological safety and employee voice on the CMS and organizational identification relationship were tested using ordinary least squares regression analyses.

The results show that cooperative CMS is positively and significantly correlated with organizational identification. In addition, the results of the hierarchical multiple regression analyses support the mediating effects of psychological safety and employee voice with regard to the relationship between CMS and organizational identification.

Given that cooperative CMS are associated with valued organizational outcomes such as higher employees’ commitment, trust and satisfaction in leaders and citizenship behaviors, organizational efforts to foster cooperative CMS should prove fruitful. Moreover, focussing on efforts to improve leader-follower relationship and to create a trust-based work environment could increase the likelihood that CMS will increase level of employees’ identification with their organizations.

The value of this study is its original contribution to the research literature, as no previous studies, which incorporated CMS, organizational identification, and psychological safety and voice behavior as mediating variables were found during the exhaustive literature review.

The purpose of this study is to predict cooperation in negotiation through the lens of individual differences. Specifically, this paper examines how a social competence variable called “political skill” relates to cooperation and subsequent effects on negotiation process, outcomes and negotiator reputation. The authors demonstrate how political skill fits in the evolving literature focusing on individual differences in negotiation by comparing political skill to a wide range of other individual difference measures.

This study was conducted by assessing individual difference measures at the beginning of graduate-level negotiation courses and tracking negotiation behaviors and outcomes over several months. This approach was chosen to minimize the potential for short, time-limited interactions to mask existing relationships. It also allowed the authors to include multiple negotiation interactions, which takes a broader view of negotiation performance, and assess negotiator reputation by allowing it to emerge over time.

The results of this study show that political skill, self-rated at the beginning of this study, is significantly related to a negotiator’s overall use of cooperative behavior as rated by peers. Political skill also showed a significant relationship with reputation for cooperativeness and aggregate outcomes in negotiations. These results control for other individual difference measures such as personality, implicit negotiation beliefs, social value orientation and negotiation self-efficacy.

Using a method that allows the effects of an individual difference to materialize over time, this study empirically establishes the connection between political skill and negotiation reputation, process and outcomes. The methodological contributions of this study explore the relations between self-rated individual difference variables, peer-rated cooperative behaviors and objective coded negotiation outcomes in evaluating political skill in negotiation.

Barnard was acutely aware of the social factors present in organizations and their influence on the effectiveness of organizations. He realized that cooperation, and more specifically that systems of cooperation, were a critical, essential element of effective organizational functioning. This paper extends Barnard’s conception of cooperative systems into what we call the coworker effect. The coworker effect is as an important factor linking positive individual behavior with the broader social context of the work group. In this article we will discuss the outcomes of the coworker effect and the sources that give it its power. In so doing, we can show how cooperative systems behaviorally impact on organizations and how organizations might be able to marshal this important resource more effectively.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the optimizing behavior of agricultural supply and marketing cooperatives in the US Midwestern states.

This paper uses firm-level data from CoBank, the primary lender to agricultural cooperatives, to evaluate optimizing behavior of 77 Midwestern agricultural marketing and supply cooperatives from 2014 through 2017. The study uses the data envelopment analysis (DEA) and the weak axioms of cost minimization and profit maximization to identify whether or not a cooperative is following a cost minimization and/or profit maximization objective.

In contrast to previous research, results provide stronger support for profit maximization as the behavioral objective of agricultural cooperatives instead of cost minimization, especially for larger cooperatives.

Traditional firm theory for investor-owned firms states that businesses seek to maximize profits. Agricultural cooperatives however, could aim to maximize profits so as to redistribute profits back to user-owners as patronage refunds. Or, they could minimize costs so as to lower cost of products sold and services provided to their user-owners. Given users-control the cooperative, knowing the primary objective of agricultural cooperatives will allow for better design of research and education programming.

Given recent changes and consolidation in the agricultural industry among farms and agricultural cooperatives, this study reexamines past work that evaluated the optimizing behavior of agricultural cooperatives. Changes in industry and the necessity to remain competitive from an agribusiness standpoint have resulted in an anticipated shift toward a profit maximizing objective. The value of this study is providing an evaluation framework, using a firm-level comprehensive dataset, that represents the cooperative system.

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.