This paper provides evidence that free riders are heavily punished even if punishment is costly and does not provide any material benefits for the punisher. The more free riders negatively deviate from the group standard the more they are punished. As a consequence, the existence of an opportunity for costly punishment causes a large increase in cooperation levels because potential free riders face a credible threat. We show, in particular, that in the presence of a costly punishment opportunity almost complete cooperation can be achieved and maintained although, under the standard assumptions of rationality and selfishness, there should be no cooperation at all. We also show that free riding causes strong negative emotions among cooperators. The intensity of these emotions is the stronger the more the free riders deviate from the group standard. Our results provide, therefore, support for the hypothesis that emotions are guarantors of credible threats.

For more than 100 years, sociologists have been concerned with relatively small, cohesive social groups (Tönnies, [1887] 1940; Durkheim [1893] 1933; Spencer 1895-97; Cooley, 1909). The groups that concern sociologists are not simply categories—like redheads or people more than

Social interactions are frequently associated with social approval. Anticipation of social sanctions may have important economic consequences, in particular in the realm of collective action and voluntary cooperation. This paper investigates the impact and the limitations of social rewards on people’s behavior in the provision of a public good. We examine whether the opportunity to receive social approval in exchange for participation in collective actions is capable of overcome free-riding. We find that approval incentives alone are not sufficiently strong to cause a reduction in free-riding. However, in combination with some minimal social familiarity approval incentives generate a significant rise in cooperation. Our results also suggest that approval incentives give rise to multiple equilibria. ©1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

A substantial number of people exhibit social preferences, which means they are not solely motivated by material self-interest but also care positively or negatively for the material payoffs of relevant reference agents. We show empirically that economists fail to understand fundamental economic questions when they disregard social preferences, in particular, that without taking social preferences into account, it is not possible to understand adequately (i) effects of competition on market outcomes, (ii) laws governing cooperation and collective action, (iii) effects and the determinants of material incentives, (iv) which contracts and property rights arrangements are optimal, and (v) important forces shaping social norms and market failures.

abstract In today’s business environment, information technology (IT) is an indispensable tool for any corporation. One of the largest IT investments goes to software-related products and activities such as development, maintenance and enhancement. In order to reduce the cost of software activities and improve the quality of software products, eþ ectively managing the software development process is an important topic in the IT ® eld. Since the early 1990s, there has been rapidly growing interest in the capability maturity model (CMM) in software organizations. With the aid of CMM guidelines, a software organization can continually improve its software process. This research discusses the essence of CMM guidelines and surveys the IT organizations of the top 1000 business companies in Taiwan. It explores the status of software process management in these companies and compares the ® ndings with Japanese and US data reported in the literature.

Coevolution is an established research framework in the biological and evolutionary sciences, and though a new entrant to organization studies, it holds potential to transform the field (Lewin et al., 2003). Its fundamental premise is that entities or organizations evolve in relation to their environments while at the same time these environments evolve in relation to them. This paper argues that a coevolutionary approach is particularly well suited for research on organizations and the natural environment (O&NE), and that O&NE scholars may make significant contributions to organization theory from this perspective. However, this potential depends upon developing and maintaining a clear distinction between coevolution as a verb, or broad logic (a.k.a. macro coevolution), and coevolution as a noun, or specific mechanism (a.k.a. micro coevolution). In building these arguments the paper develops a definition and research framework for coevolutionary research and discusses theoretical and practical implications for O&NE.

Rapid organizational change is increasing the pressure on employees to continually update their skills and adapt their behavior to new organizational realities. Goal orientation is a promising motivational construct that may explain why some individuals adapt to change better. Unfortunately, the current goal orientation literature is in a state of conceptual and methodological disarray. This presentation reviews the goal orientation literature and identifies numerous conceptual ambiguities, including definitional inconsistencies, dimensional inconsistencies, and inconsistencies in the conceptualization of stability. These conceptual ambiguities result in a confusing array of goal orientation measures and manipulations and ultimately an incoherent empirical database. A dynamic self-regulation model of goal orientation, termed motivated action theory, is presented to integrate the various conceptual perspectives and to provide guidelines for future goal orientation research.

This paper is the result of reflection upon a series of software measurement exercises that have been carried out in a telecommunications engineering environment. These exercises were conducted in a manner which attempted, as far as possible, to follow recognised good practice. It is argued that while approaches such as the Goal/Question/Metric paradigm and the framework for the validation of software measurements suggested by Kitchenham et al. have rightly been very influential, they have not always offered useful advice because they have been based either on traditional engineering paradigms and/or have used unhelpful analogies from physical science.

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The history of the risk management profession shows increasing specialization within disciplines. In organizations this specialization is often institutionalized in different (sub)departments each one taking into account different types of risk. As a result the interrelations between these risks are neglected and therewith the question arises who will manage the specialists. Further, an inventory of these specializations shows that theory formulation and empirical research regarding the relationship between risks, the organization of production and the management of labour is underdeveloped. This paper presents a theoretical and empirical perspective which could serve as a starting point for research in this domain of risk management.