Suchergebnisse

One hundred and ninety participants (95 undergraduates and 95 employees) responded to a factorial survey in which a number of case-based organizational allocation tasks were described. Participants were asked to imagine themselves as employees in fictitious organizations and chose among three allocations of employee-development schemes invested by the manager in different work groups. The allocations regarded how such investments should be allocated between two parties. Participants chose twice, once picking the fairest and once the best allocation. One between-subjects factor varied whether the parties represented social (i.e., choosing among allocations between two different work groups) or temporal comparisons (i.e., choosing among allocations between the present and the following year). Another between-subjects factor varied whether participants' in-group was represented by the parties or not. One allocation maximized the outcome to one party, another maximized the joint outcome received by both parties, and a third provided both parties with equal but lower outcomes. It was predicted that equality, although always deficient to both parties, would be the preferred allocation when parties represented social comparisons and when choices were based on fairness. When parties represented temporal comparisons, and when choices were based on preference, maximizing the joint outcome was hypothesized to be the preferred allocation. Results supported these hypotheses. Against what was predicted, whether the in-group was represented by the parties or not did not moderate the results, indicating that participants' allocation preferences were not affected by self-interest. The main message is that people make sensible distinctions between what they prefer and what they regard as fair. The results were the same for participating students who imagined themselves as being employees and participants who were true employees, suggesting that no serious threats to external validity are committed when university students are used as participants.

Previous research has not been conclusive as to whether people prefer different or identical allocation principles in distributions of positive and negative outcomes. Thus, in this study, the question of whether or not group goal accounts for preferred allocation of positive and negative
outcomes was posed. As hypothesized for division of surpluses, the results showed that relationship-oriented goals predicted preferences for equality, whereas performance-oriented goals predicted preferences for equity. Moreover, the results were the same for allocation of deficits. This suggests
that people implicitly have different orientations, or goals, in mind in group situations that similarly influence the way they prefer to allocate positive and negative outcomes. The results also showed that participants allocating deficits deviated to a larger extent from the allocation principles
than did participants allocating surpluses.

An important problem for decision-makers in society deals with the efficient and equitable allocation of scarce resources to individuals and groups. The significance of this problem is rapidly growing since there is a rising demand for scarce resources all over the world. Such resource dilemmas belong to a conceptually broader class of situations known as social dilemmas. In this type of dilemma, individual choices that appear ''rational'' often result in suboptimal group outcomes. In this article we study how people make monetary allocation decisions between the community where they live and a neighbouring community, with the aim of finding out to what extent these decisions are subject to biased over-weighting. The manuscript reports four experiments that deal with the way individuals make such allocation decisions when the potential beneficiaries are such communities. The specific goal of these experiments is to gauge the amount of bias in the weights that people assign to the various beneficiaries. Taken together, the results from all the four experiments suggest that making the gain of the neighbouring community prominent to a higher extent de-biases the outcomes (the prominence effect) compared to when own community gain is made prominent. Place identity is discussed as a potentially important factor in this connection. Hence, it may be argued that there seems to be some kind of a pro-self component that is able to explain a large part of the variance observed for the prominence effect. Connections between such a factor and in-group favouritism are discussed. A strength of the study was that these major results appeared to be quite robust when considered as task effects, as the salience of the manipulated context factors in the studies (in terms of reliable main or interaction effects) did not distort them.

Abstract. Seventy-two undergraduates participating in a step-level asymmetric public good dilemma were requested to distribute the provided public good among the group members to achieve different group goals. In line with the hypotheses, economic productivity resulted in equitable allocations, harmony in equal allocations, and social concern in need-based allocations. The results also supported the hypotheses that salience of group goal minimizes influences of self-interest on allocations and that perceived fairness accounts for why people pursuing different group goals differ in their preferences for allocation of public goods.

Readers need look no further if they seeking an edited volume compiled to present the latest developments in the field of social dilemma research. Social dilemmas are situations when there is a conflict between self-interest and collective interest. This work examines under what circumstances people make decisions that are in line with the collective interest as well as investigating what can increase the likelihood of cooperation. Three man sections mirror the different levels of analysis: individual, group, and societal.