Cooperative behavior between generalists and specialists In homogenous and heterogenous pairings involving leadership in a public goods game

• Main Authors: Lee, Beatrice Mynn, Ng, Jocelyn Yu Xuan, Phua, Li Xin
• Other Authors: Jonathan Tan
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Social sciences::Economic theory
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/148245
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

People can be either of 2 types, specialists and generalists. Specialists are experts whereby they have in-depth skills and expertise in their few chosen fields whereas generalists are “jacks of all trade, master of none” - they have a broader range of field interests but with less in-depth skills and expertise. Disagreements in workplaces become extremely common due to the differences in breadths and depths of expertise between these 2 types of people, which lead to uncooperative behaviors and disagreement resulting in loss of productivity, less-than-optimal outcomes in decision-making and task failure (SHRM, 2021). This paper aims to study the cooperative behavior between these 2 types of people and understand how the extent of disagreement between homogenous and heterogenous pairings affect the cooperative behavior in a public goods game when decisions are initiated by an assigned 1st mover in the Full Responsibility Treatment (FR) and a random device in the No Responsibility Treatment (NR). It also seeks to analyze how they would adjust their cooperative behaviors when their pairing combination moves homogenously to heterogeneously (Order 1) and vice versa (Order 2). In this study, there are 4 sessions, 2 for each treatment to carry out the 2 orders. Game theory prediction through backward induction is that none of the participants will contribute. Logit regression model was used, and results showed that changes in cooperative behaviors between 1st and 2nd movers are apparent in different treatments and orders when expertise type, combination of type pairing and order sequence of type pairing are taken into consideration. 2nd movers are less likely to reciprocate in FR, but when they do, the cooperation rate is higher when 1st movers are Type-S. Ironically, participants starting off in uncooperative environments (Order 1) sustained their cooperation throughout the experiment unlike those following Order 2.