Organizations and Markets

Le Doux Commerce — Cont’d

12 November 2013 at 10:29 pm Nicolai Foss Leave a comment

| Nicolai Foss |

More evidence on the softening nature of commercial society.  Here is the abstract:

Levitt and List (2007) conjecture that selection pressures among business people will reduce or eliminate pro-social choices. While recent work comparing students with various adult populations often fails to find that adults are less pro-social, this evidence is not necessarily at odds with the selection hypothesis, which may be most relevant for behavior in cutthroat competitive industries. To examine the selection hypothesis, we compare students with two adult populations deliberately selected from two cutthroat internet industries — domain trading and adult entertainment (pornography). Across a range of indicators, business people in these industries are more pro-social than students: they are more altruistic, trusting, trustworthy, and lying averse. They also respond differently to shame-based incentives. We offer a theory of reverse selection that can rationalize these findings

Entry filed under: - Foss -, Management Theory.