Gift Exchange and Team Production

I wanted to respond to the discussion on the last blog post on income risks in the future. The class discussion made me think about future income risks after college and my first job. Initially, I did not think about this and this speaks to my generation’s focus on “the first job”. We work hard in school to get quality internships that we hope will turn into a job after school. We have this fantasy that we will be in the same company for years and move up in the company. I never thought about have numerous jobs and switching companies. However, this is a very real possibility. In addition, because we will have many different jobs after school, it is important to have a variety of skills to offer to employers so that you can stay desirable. Having a variety of skills has impacted my decisions and I did mention this in my original post.
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Moving on to this week’s post, after reading the three articles I found themes of fairness, sharing, and altruism. I analyzed the articles below and related them to the gift exchange model. Each of the themes affect the opportunity for the gift exchange model to be present in an organization.

Sharing marbles:
Jonathan Haidt uses an experiment on three-year-old children to explain concepts of sharing. He explains the experiment, “if you or your partner pulls on the rope alone, you just get more rope. But if you both pull at the same time, the rope dislodges some marbles, which you each get to keep” (Haidt). This demonstrates the act of teamwork. Working with others is an important skill to learn and is introduced to children at a young age. Life experiences could be thought of as a team sport and you need to work with others in different situations. Even though people may prefer to work alone, life is full of situation that you must work in a team to be successful. The outcome of 75% and 25% can be applied to reality in the sense that some people may benefit more in different events that required the work of a team. This may not be fair, but as everyone knows, life isn’t fair. I believe the reason why the children were willing to give up a marble to their partner was because of the teamwork and this suggests that the other child would reciprocate the offer. Reciprocation is a key part of the gift exchange model and is not possible without it. Regarding the no work required scenario, neither child invested any work into the activate and it was based on luck. Taking away the effort invested into the act diminishes the opportunity for reciprocation and the gift exchange model has no chance. I did not find the two-rope scenario surprising because it removed the teamwork element from the first scenario. No teamwork, no gift exchange. He goes on to say, “Tomasello believes that the ‘share-the-spoils’ response emerged at some point in the last half-million years, as humans began to forage and hunt cooperatively. Those who had the response could develop stable, ongoing partnerships. They worked together in small teams, which accomplished far more than individuals could on their own” (Haidt). This explains how communities evolved through time and how teamwork is a skill still valued today.

Unfair game:
Children at a young age understand the concept of fairness. After they understand what it means to be fair, they demand fairness and their parents, teachers, and overseers bend over backwards to make their world fair. This is impossible due to reality, but still children are kept in this bubble of fairness. Maybe it would benefit children to have that bubble burst and the sooner the better? Maybe they would learn lessons sooner and be better off in the long run? I am familiar with the capuchin monkey study in the second article and find it comical, but reflective of society. The monkey’s child-like behavior of throwing the undesirable food is common to parents and babysitters that give children unwarranted food. Relating this to the gift exchange model, firms need to offer a “gift” to their employees that is desirable or otherwise the gift will not be longed after. Of course, employees are not going to make a scene in a professional setting over an undesirable gift, but they will not produce the behavior an employer wants to see. If there is not a reward or intrinsic motivation for employees, then the gift exchange model will not exist in a firm.

Altruism:
David Brooks opens the article with, “Western society is built on the assumption that people are fundamentally selfish”. This illustrates the idea that people are all opportunistic at their core. Based on this assumption, the gift exchange model would not exist. I would instead argue that people act both opportunistically and not opportunistic depending on the situation. He goes on to say that people are motivated by making themselves better off and gaining individual success. However, in Identity and the Economics of Organization, George Akerlof and Rachel Kranton argue that how an individual is motivated is determined by their identity and their identity can be molded by a firm or management.

Brooks, David, The Power of Altruism, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/08/opinion/the-power-of-altruism.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0

Haidt, Jonathan, How to Get the Rich to Share the Marbles, The New York Times, https://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/how-to-get-the-rich-to-share-the-marbles/?ref=opinion


When a Child Thinks Life is Unfair, The New York Times, https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/05/when-a-child-thinks-life-is-unfair-use-game-theory/?contentCollection=smarter-living&hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanNovember 3, 2017 at 11:17 AM

    I am glad that you divided your post into parts, with the first part an extension of the prior post on managing income risk. I wonder, however, whether you could have pushed that part more. In particular, how does the realization that you will go through future job changes impact what you plan to do while you are still a student? We've had a bit of interaction on this issue about whether you can learning things more fundamentally by thinking through what is required before trying to deliver a final product. This was in regard to the Excel homework. Can you apply that idea to other learning that you are doing, in my class an elsewhere? Would doing that have a positive impact on your down the road?

    In the second half of the paper you spent more time summarizing the pieces than trying to identify work situations you have experienced where some or all of those situations come into play. You did mention the Akerlof and Kranton paper with regard to the David Brooks piece on altruism, but you might have gone further here and in what situations you feel that you are an insider. Does altruism ring true in those situations? What about when you are an outsider?

    Likewise on sharing the marbles - does the insider/outsider distinction matter in adult versions of playing that came? I can't say why those questions occur to me but don't seem to occur to you in your post. I will say, however, that I believe if you develop proficiency in asking questions like this, it will help you be flexible in the job market, at least for the sort of knowledge work that every student in the class aspires to.

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    Replies
    1. Joan RobinsonNovember 13, 2017 at 7:29 PM

      The realization that I will go through future job changes impacts my plans while I am still a student in many ways. I want to be a well rounded student and have a variety desirable skills that will benefit me in future jobs. I want to have a variety of academic fields. To do this I plan to have a stat minor and add a math minor. I also want to have a variety of experiences. For this I have working at DRES on campus and my internship from the summer. I want to build this area by getting experience in an insurance office, medical company, or banking company. I also have a variety of clubs that show my interests. In terms of working though an assignment before just looking for the immediate answer, I do believe this can be applied to other areas of my life and be beneficial. One might be researching many internships and applying to a few and putting out unique cover letters to each one instead of applying to a ton and using a universal cover letter.

      I see that I summarized more than found examples from the texts and this was an error on my part. I think I focused on addressing all three articles instead of connecting all three to examples and expanding upon them.

      I go further into these articles in the beginning of my next post to address the ideas and questions I left out of this post.

      Delete
  2. Robert Giffen Econ 490 fall 2017December 12, 2017 at 11:21 AM

    I like that you reflected about your previous post at the start. I think that is a good way to go about these blog posts. For the second half you did provide more of a summary of the posts. However, in my post I also connected our group project on identity to the altruism article. It was pretty interesting to see that a concept we learned about being applied in a different way. It was interesting to consider this as another way to capture motivations in the workplace.

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