Tag Archives: Organizations

Greed and Fear in Network Reciprocity: Implications for Cooperation among Organizations

This paper depicts the evolution of cooperation on regular lattices, with strategies propagating locally by relative fitness. The underlying dilemma arises from two distinct dimensions—the gains for exploiting cooperative partners (Greed) and the cost of cooperating with exploitative partners (Fear). This paper uses computational experiments to show that embedding interaction in networks generally leads Greed and Fear to have divergent, interactive, and highly nonlinear effects on cooperation at the macro level, even when individuals respond identically to Greed and Fear. We then replicate our experiments on inter-organizational network data derived from links through shared directors among 2,400 large US corporations.

Kitts, James A., Leal, Diego F., Jones, Thomas M., Felps, Will, and Shawn L. Berman. “Greed and Fear in Network Reciprocity: Implications for Cooperation among Organizations” PLoS ONE 11(2), 2016.

Cultural Integration and Differentiation in Groups and Organizations

Experimental and field research has demonstrated a pervasive tendency toward pairwise conformity among individuals connected by positive social ties, and work using formal models has shown that opinions on connected influence networks should thus converge toward uniformity. Observing that diversity persists even in small scale groups and organizations, we investigate two empirically grounded mechanisms of social differentiation that may account for this persistence: First, actors may dislike or disrespect peers who diverge too much from their own views, and may change their opinions or behaviors to distance themselves further from those negative referents. Second, when surrounded by similar others, actors may try to maintain a sufficient sense of uniqueness by exploring new opinions or behaviors. Using computational experiments, we demonstrate that these two mechanisms lead to different patterns of polarization, radicalization, and factionalism and also investigate the conditions under which integration occurs. In closing, we discuss the implications for cultural dynamics in organizations.

Mäs, Michael, Flache, Andreas, and James A. Kitts. “Cultural Integration and Differentiation in Groups and Organizations.” Perspectives on Culture and Agent-Based Simulations: Integrating Cultures, Springer, 2014.

Egocentric Bias or Information Management? Selective Disclosure and the Social Roots of Norm Misperception

This paper examines systematic biases in group members’ inferences about collective support for group norms. While theories of “looking glass perception” suggest a tendency to project our own preferences onto others, this paper shows that observed biases may simply reflect flows of information through social networks. Members conceal their counter-normative behavior and divulge it disproportionately within confidence relations. This predicts structured inference, where members’ inferences depend on their social ties, and also pluralistic ignorance, where members generally overestimate collective support for existing norms. These predictions are evaluated in a field study of perceived normative consensus in five vegetarian housing cooperatives. Results fail to support the intrinsic bias argument, but demonstrate these forms of information bias. Also, by locating this structural effect only in large groups that facilitate private conversation, findings highlight the mechanism of selective disclosure. This source of normative inertia may account for the puzzling stability of broadly unpopular norms in groups.

Kitts, James A. “Egocentric Bias or Information Management? Selective Disclosure and the Social Roots of Norm Misperception.” Social Psychology Quarterly, 66(3): 222-237, September 2003.