Four crucial facts

It doesn't surprise scientists that people are often selfish and don't work together well during an experiment in which there are strong incentives to keep the money. In fact, traditional math-based predictions of behavior anticipate much more selfishness than shows up in real life.

But there are four intriguing aspects to these kinds of experiments that have theorists rethinking their ideas of human interaction. These little surprises are crucial for a manager to understand if she wants to increase teamwork in her own business unit.

• First, even though there are incentives to freeload from the very beginning, a large proportion of people start by venturing some of their money, maybe to test the waters, maybe out of a sense of morality. They arrive at a job fully prepared to cooperate with the group -- if they find cooperation to be the norm.
  
• Second, without any way of holding team members accountable for their work on the group's behalf, some will coast. Taking advantage of the group in this way creates resentment that causes many of those originally willing members to withhold what they control, and this snowballs into an almost perfectly selfish workgroup that loses the chance of making solid profits. For these experiments in teamwork without accountability, "it is well known that cooperation strongly deteriorates over time and reaches rather low levels in the final period," wrote Fehr and Gächter. "In view of these facts there can be little doubt that in the no-punishment condition subjects are not able to achieve stable cooperation."
  
• Third, even when it is personally expensive to punish another team member, many participants will "invest" in keeping the game fair. Researchers call this "altruistic punishment" because it requires a player to spend his own money to enforce the group's interest. " A subject is more heavily punished the more his or her contribution falls below the average contribution of other group members," wrote the researchers. This suggests that even with performance-based bonuses that create a risk of neglecting their own rewards for a while, employees' attention can be seriously diverted when a bad apple is in the barrel.
  
• Fourth, if team members can be punished for slacking, the slackers behave better and the naturally cooperative people, seeing a fairer system, become more willing to invest. The group's profits rise.

For a manager, the contrast cannot be clearer. Would he rather go easy on the foot-draggers and allow his team to become disheartened, possibly sidetracked by the powerful emotions of "altruistic punishment," or maintain work standards so the group enjoys the benefits of ever-higher levels of individual investment in the team's accomplishments?

Faced with one or more drones, a team has two avenues for relief. They may use various forms of social coercion to correct the behavior, or they must rely on the manager to punish lazy associates.

The first option, self-policing, is not uncommon, but it has limits in the normal course of office, retail, or factory work. Off the coast of Maine, lobstermen illegally cut the buoys from traps set in a fellow lobsterman's unofficial waters. One Oakland (Michigan) University professor issued advice on how to keep "hitchhikers" from hiding inside an otherwise diligent study group. "Set your limits early and high, because hitchhikers have an uncanny ability to detect just how much they can get away with," she cautioned.

Personal ostracism, refusing to work with someone (where that's an option), [or] a serious talk over coffee . . . all help set limits on those who always seem to make it home in time for dinner. Sports teams often have a player who helps lead and even reprimand. However, self-policing is limited by the authority of those who want to employ it.

Ultimately it may require the coach to pull someone off the field. The second, more powerful, and most obvious answer inside a business is for the manager to police the problem. The best managers know in their gut what social researchers have locked in through hundreds of experiments in cooperation.

"The prevalence of this sort of strong reciprocity is supported by a vast body of evidence," wrote Kahan. "So-called 'public goods' experiments -- laboratory constructs designed to simulate collective action problems -- have consistently shown that the willingness of individuals to make costly contributions to collective goods is highly conditional on their perception that others are willing to do so." One of the worst one-two punches to a team's esprit de corps and productivity is having a slacker in their midst and a manager who lacks the spine to do anything about it.

A good manager must continually ask herself whether her team tips that maybe-I-will/maybe-I-won't newcomer toward jumping in with both feet. This assessment was among the first questions asked by one Marriott hotel manager. "Who is the worst employee at this hotel, and how long have they been here?" she asked. Why did she want to know? "Whoever is the lowest sets your standard, no matter what you say to the contrary.

Copyright Ó 2008 The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ.  All rights reserved.  Reprinted with permission.  Visit The Gallup Management Journal at http://gmj.gallup.com/

Article from The Gallup Management Journal