Social Capital, Third Party Gossip, and Cooperation in Organizations

Abstract

In many organizational settings cooperation between peers is one of the crucial preconditions not only for the production of collective goods, but also for the successful accomplishment of one’s own tasks. However, not all individuals are equally successful in eliciting voluntary cooperation from their colleagues. This article deals with two factors that may contribute to the differential success of organizational members to maintain such cooperative relationships with their peers: social networks and strategies of informal social control.

Informal social structures are widely recognized as influential ex ante determinants of organizational behavior. Far less attention has been paid to the question how differences in ex post informal social control behavior affect intraorganizational cooperation. The goal of the present contribution is to sketch and empirically test a theoretical model of cooperation that incorporates both dimensions into one framework.

In what follows, we will first give a brief overview of existing insights concerning the link between informal networks, strategies of informal social control and intraorganizational cooperation. A theoretical model and two testable hypotheses are presented in the third section. This will be followed by an outline of the empirical study and the research design. The article closes with a discussion of the results.

Keywords: Gossip, Sanctions, Cooperation, Social Capital, Social Networks, Organisations