Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/196827 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 12330
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
A growing body of research has been investigating the role of management practices and managerial behaviour in conventional private firms and public sector organizations. However, little is known about managers' behavioural profile in noninvestor-owned firms. This paper aims to fill this gap by providing a comprehensive behavioural characterization of managers employed in cooperatives.We gathered incentive-compatible measures of risk preferences, time preferences, reciprocity, altruism, and trust from 196 Uruguayan managers (half of them employed in worker cooperatives) and 92 first-year undergraduate students. To do this, we conducted a high-stakes lab-in-the-field experiment in which participants played a series of online experimental games and made incentivised decisions. The average payoff in the experiment was approximately 2.5 times higher than the average local managerial wage in the private sector. Our key findings are that (1) the fraction of risk loving subjects is lower among co-op managers compared to conventional managers, and (2) co-op managers appear to be more altruistic than their conventional counterparts. Interestingly, we do not observe significant differences between the two groups across other preference domains, such as impatience, trust, and reciprocity.
Subjects: 
risk-aversion
time preferences
altruism
reciprocity
trust
lab-in-the-field experiment
managers
cooperatives
JEL: 
C90
D81
J54
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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