Book chapter
THE EFFECT OF STRUCTURED EMOTION EXPRESSION ON RECIPROCITY IN BILATERAL GIFT EXCHANGE
Experiments in Organizational Economics, pp.1-18
Research in Experimental Economics, Emerald Group Publishing
01/01/2017
DOI: 10.1108/S0193-230620160000019001
Abstract
We augment a standard bilateral gift-exchange game to allow employees to communicate their gratitude for, or disapproval toward, the wage assigned to them by their manager. This provides employees with a means of reciprocation or emotion expression toward the employee which is not available in a standard gift-exchange game and may substitute for the higher-than-equilibrium efforts commonly seen in this environment. We find that employees express gratitude or disapproval according to the wage received, but these messages are not a substitute for monetary reciprocation as the relationship between wages and effort is unchanged. These results suggest that employees view the messages as a form of emotional expression independent from rewarding or punishing managers. Average wage levels are little affected by allowing messages, although wages do fall more over time in the absence of messages and individual managers' wage choices are affected by the messages they receive.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- THE EFFECT OF STRUCTURED EMOTION EXPRESSION ON RECIPROCITY IN BILATERAL GIFT EXCHANGE
- Creators
- David J. Cooper - Florida State Univ, Dept Econ, Tallahassee, FL 32306 USAJohn P. Lightle - Virginia Commonwealth University
- Contributors
- Sebastian J Goerg (Editor)John R Hamman (Editor)
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- Experiments in Organizational Economics, pp.1-18
- Publisher
- Emerald Group Publishing; BINGLEY
- Series
- Research in Experimental Economics
- DOI
- 10.1108/S0193-230620160000019001
- ISSN
- 0193-2306
- Number of pages
- 18
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 01/01/2017
- Academic Unit
- Economics
- Record Identifier
- 9984420844102771
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