Davide Dragone, Fabio Galeotti, Raimondello Orsini

Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche

2011 Bertinoro, ESSE Summer School

Do cooperators cooperate?

Work in progress: some preliminary results

A laboratory experiment carried out from May 2009 to June 2011 at LES – Forlì and BLESS – Bologna.

Funding: PRIN 2007/B8SC7A_002 - “CSR and Distributive Justice”CFICEI - Centro di formazione e iniziativa sulla

cooperazione e l'etica d’impresaAICCON - Associazione Italiana per la Promozione della

Cultura della Cooperazione e del Non-profit

Motivation and benchmark

Are coop workers different from other types of workers? Are they more “cooperative”?

Coop organizations are supposed to be culturally different and might have a peculiar work climate.

The lab experiment involves 228 subjects: • 84 coop workers from a cooperative of

production and work (Formula Servizi) - 7 sessions with 12 subjects each;

• 72 students from the Forlì Campus - 5 sessions;

• 72 non coop workers (Obiettivo Lavoro) – 5 sessions.

Coop Definition

A co-operative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.

Coop Values

Co-operatives are based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. In the tradition of their founders, co-operative members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others.

Coop 7 Principles• The co-operative principles are

guidelines by which co-operatives put their values into practice.

1st Principle: Voluntary and Open Membership

• Co-operatives are voluntary organisations, open to all persons able to use their services and willing to accept the responsibilities of membership, without gender, social, racial, political or religious discrimination.

Coop 7 Principles

2nd Principle: Democratic Member Control Co-operatives are democratic organisations controlled by their members, who actively participate in setting their policies and making decisions. Men and women serving as elected representatives are accountable to the membership. In primary co-operatives members have equal voting rights (one member, one vote) and co-operatives at other levels are also organised in a democratic manner.

Coop 7 Principles3rd Principle: Member Economic

Participation Members contribute equitably to, and democratically control, the capital of their co-operative. At least part of that capital is usually the common property of the co-operative. Members usually receive limited compensation, if any, on capital subscribed as a condition of membership. Members allocate surpluses for any or all of the following purposes: developing their co-operative, possibly by setting up reserves, part of which at least would be indivisible; benefiting members in proportion to their transactions with the co-operative; and supporting other activities.

Coop 7 Principles4th Principle: Autonomy and

Independence Co-operatives are autonomous, self-help organisations controlled by their members. If they enter to agreements with other organisations, including governments, or raise capital from external sources, they do so on terms that ensure democratic control by their members and maintain their co-operative autonomy.

Coop 7 Principles5th Principle: Education, Training

and Information Co-operatives provide education and training for their members, elected representatives, managers, and employees so they can contribute effectively to the development of their co-operatives. They inform the general public - particularly young people and opinion leaders - about the nature and benefits of co-operation.

Coop 7 Principles6th Principle: Co-operation among Co-operatives

Co-operatives serve their members most effectively and strengthen the co-operative movement by working together through local, national, regional and international structures.

Coop 7 Principles7th Principle: Concern for

Community Co-operatives work for the sustainable development of their communities through policies approved by their members.

Web: International Cooperative Alliance

http://www.ica.coop/al-ica/

Formula Servizi Coop (2009)

Obiettivo Lavoro Spa (2010)

Revenue 48,45 mln 357,3 mlnWorkers 1656 (844 are members) 677 (direct workers)Interim CV 0 966.068 (temporary)% female 85,33% 48,3%Age % 21-40 y.o. 26,5% 70% Age % 40-50 38% 21%Age % > 50 34,8% 7,4%% italians 89,1% 69,8%% Blue collar 96,3% #ISO 9001 From 1996 #CSR Ethical Code YES YESISO 14001 eco From 2005 From 2009SA 8000 From 2003 From 2007OHSAS 18001 From 2008 No

Coop vs Spa

Lab exp: students and non-students

• Experiments with students are effective and cheap/easy to set up.

• They allow for replication and international comparability.

• However, how much do the results extend to other social groups is questionable

Main sources for the classification methods

Pruitt (1967), “Reward structure and cooperation: the decomposed prisoner’s dilemma game”, J.Per.Soc.Psich.

Brosig (2002), “Identifying cooperative behavior: some experimental results in a prisoner’s dilemma game” JEBO.

Burlando-Guala (2005), “Heterogeneous agents in public good experiments”, Exp. Economics

Fischbacher – Gachter – Fehr (2001), “Are people conditionally cooperative?” Economic Letters

Experimental design: 7 tasks

1) Dictator game 2) Public Good (PG) game: Strategy

Method: 20 choices3) Decomposed prisoner’s dilemma: 24

allocations4) PG game: 12 rounds5) PG game: 12 rounds with communication6) PG game: 12 rounds7) Stag Hunt (the only task with a loaded

frame)+) Questionnaire

Experimental sequence

Experimental SequenceStage

Task Number of rounds

Task 1

Classification Stage

Dictator game 1

Task 2 Strategy Method 1

Task 3 Decomposed PD 24

Task 4

Main Stage

Repeated linear PGG 12

Task 5 Repeated linear PGG with emoticons 12

Task 6 Repeated linear PGG 12

Task 7Final Stage

Stag hunt game 1

Dictator Game: results

0% 3% 7% 10% 17% 23% 27% 30% 33% 37% 40% 43% 47% 50% 53% 67% 73% 77% 83% 90% 93% 97% 100%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

studentscoopnon coop

Linear PGG: Strategy method

Subjects were randomly allocated to groups of four individuals to play a linear Strategy PGG with the following payoff function:

Two choices: one unconditional contribution + a ‘contribution table’. One subject per each group was randomly selected and paid accordingly to her ‘contribution table’, based on the ‘unconditional contributions’ of the other three members. The unselected players were paid accordingly to the ‘unconditional contributions’ of all the group members.

The contribution table on the screen

Conditional cooperation – standard results

76%

3%

3%1% 11%

5%

students

conditionaltriangularcompensatorv_shapedunconditionalother

Classification from Strategy method

58%

10%

10%

2%

13%

7%

coop

conditionaltriangularcompensatorv_shapedunconditionalother

67%3%

7%

2%

17%

5%

non coop

conditional

triangular

compensator

v_shaped

unconditional

other

Conditional cooperators vs. compensators

Average contributions

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 180 190 2000

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

studentscoopnon coop45 degrees

Decomposed Prisoner’s Dilemma

The motivational vector

• The total sum (own plus other) allocated is not constant over the 24 combinations.

• There is no feedback concerning the other's choices. The final payoff is obtained by combining the 24 choices of each subject with those of the other player.

• Taking the 24 vectors chosen by each subject and adding them up, it is possible to obtain the motivational vector of each subject.

The Value Orientation Circle

2%

55%

40%

3%

students

AggressiveCooperativeIndividualisticReciprocatorCompetitive

Coop workers vs. benchmark

2% 2%

43%

45%

8%

non coop

AggressiveCooperativeIndividualisticReciprocatorCompetitive

2%

6%

24%

55%

13%

coop

AggressiveCooperativeIndividualisticReciprocatorCompetitive

Main stage: 3 repeated linear PGG

• Groups of 4 – Anonimous – Partners in stage • 3 sessions - 12 rounds with restart effect:

- new set of instructions (with emoticons);- 3 practice rounds with forced input.• Same Linear PG Game:

• Belief elicitation before each round (prediction of average contribution, with paid incentive for accuracy).

Repeated PGG: standard results

Herrmann-Thoni-Gachter (2008): 16 countries analysis

Public good game: benchmark (session 1)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1240%

45%

50%

55%

60%

65%

70%

students

Public good game: comparison

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1240%

45%

50%

55%

60%

65%

70%

75%

80%

85%

studentscoopnon coop

Approval and Disapproval

emoticons

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1240%

45%

50%

55%

60%

65%

70%

75%

80%

85%

studentscoopnon coop

PG Game: remarks

While the benchmark behaves “as usual”, some peculiar facts are observed among coop workers:

• They contribute much more on average (74% vs. 56%).

• They take advantage of a costless and simple communication technique to enhance group performance (no contribution decrease).

• Strategy Method: non-negligible percentage of “compensators”: an example of ”we thinking”.

To do

• OUT: extension of the samples (coop and non coop).

• IN: Analysis of the influence of:- role at work (white / blue collar)- age and seniority (time spent in the

cooperative)- gender, education, etc.- Links with SDT theory…

Positive Factors for introjection, identification

and integrationFeeling of competence during actionPositive performance feedbackInternal perceived locus of

causality: experience behaviour as self determined: autonomy vs control

Sense of security and relatedness

Final stage: Stag Hunt

• A one-shot stag hunt game with loaded frame using an in-context presentation.

• Two workers have to decide whether to adopt or not a new work procedure. The adoption of the new procedure is costly (50 tokens) for the agent since she has to spend time and effort to learn it. If both workers learn the procedure, the work will yield 200 tokens for each worker. Otherwise the work will yield 100 tokens each.