Communication: Content or relationship?

Mohlin, Erik; Johannesson, Magnus

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2005.12.003

Cited by 48 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 28 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…It has long been known that face-to-face conversation prior to actual experimental interaction will enhance cooperation dramatically (review in Ostrom, 2003). Evidence that the cooperation-enhancing effect of communication is not just a matter of establishing a personal relationship comes from experiments that involve third parties as conduits of written communications (Mohlin & Johannesson, 2008) or that involve computer-mediated "chat room" interactions (Bochet, Page & Putterman, 2006). Ellingsen and Johannesson (2008) used one-shot dictator games to show that allowing anonymous written feedback induced a substantial increase (ca.…”

Section: Other Cooperatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Communication and collective action: language and the evolution of human cooperation

Smith¹

2010

Evolution and Human Behavior

139

114

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

All social species face various "collective action problems" (CAPs) or "social dilemmas," meaning problems in achieving cooperating when the best move from a selfish point of view yields an inferior collective outcome. Compared to most other species, humans are very good at solving these challenges, suggesting that something rather peculiar about human sociality facilitates collective action. This article proposes that language -the uniquely human faculty of symbolic communication -fundamentally alters the possibilities for collective action. I explore these issues using simple game-theoretic models and empirical evidence (both ethnographic and experimental). I review several standard mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation -mutualism, reciprocal altruism, indirect reciprocity and signalinghighlighting their limitations when it comes to explaining large-group cooperation, as well as the ways in which language helps overcome those limitations. Language facilitates complex coordination and is essential for establishing norms governing production efforts and distribution of collective goods that motivate people to cooperate voluntarily in large groups. Language also significantly lowers the cost of detecting and punishing "free riders," thus greatly enhancing the scope and power of standard conditional reciprocity. In addition, symbolic communication encourages new forms of collectively beneficial displays and reputation management -what evolutionists often term "signaling" and "indirect reciprocity." Thus, language reinforces existing forces that favor the evolution of cooperation, as well as creating new opportunities for collective action not available even to our closest primate relatives.

show abstract

Section: Other Cooperatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Communication and collective action: language and the evolution of human cooperation

Smith¹

2010

Evolution and Human Behavior

139

114

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In addition, recent research shows that free-form communication dramatically increases altruistic behavior, which may further remove the incentive for defecting in the first period (see for example Mohlin and Johannesson (2008) and Andreoni and Rao (2010)). Although we are not aware of any study that directly compares free-form communication with the type of structured communication we implement, related evidence by Lundquist, Ellingsen, Gribbe, and Johannesson (2007) suggests that the altruism-inducing effects are likely to be stronger with free-form communication than structured communication.…”

Section: Comparison To Previous Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Credible communication and cooperation: Experimental evidence from multi-stage Games

Andersson¹,

Wengström²

2012

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in

show abstract

“…Rabin, 1993;Charness and Rabin, 2002) as alternative mechanism for our findings. It is also hard to align these observations with the idea that employee performance stems from reduced social distance (e.g., Bohnet and Frey, 1999;Mohlin and Johannesson, 2008), or improved social esteem (e.g., Andreoni and Bernheim, 2009;Ellingsen and Johannesson, 2008) through communication between managers and employees. Finally, our evidence contradicts models of inequity aversion (cf.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Value of Top-Down Communication for Organizational Performance

Brandes

Darai

2014

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We design a laboratory experiment to identify causal performance effects of top-down communication between managers and their subordinates. Our focus lies on communication that resolves uncertainty about the work environment but does not provide task-specific knowledge. Recent articles in the business press report a lack of such communication in real-world organizations and associate it with reduced organizational performance. Our results confirm this observation. We find that top-down communication is a profitable way for managers to increase employee performance in the presence of uncertainty. Specifically, we show that non-communication is the worst option for managers. However, 50 percent of our experimental managers use top-down communication too restrictively. Overall, managers forego 30 percent of their potential profits through non-communication. We show that organizations can overcome this problem by adopting automated information procedures, which are equally effective.

show abstract

Communication: Content or relationship?

Cited by 48 publications

References 28 publications

Communication and collective action: language and the evolution of human cooperation

Communication and collective action: language and the evolution of human cooperation

Credible communication and cooperation: Experimental evidence from multi-stage Games

The Value of Top-Down Communication for Organizational Performance

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About