Interactions on Job and Employee Effort within Italian Social Cooperatives

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse, using a standard ordered probit model, the correlates of worker effort within Italian social cooperatives. The main assumption of the paper is that employee effort depends not only on standard variables that explain effort but also on employees’ interpersonal relationships on the job. The analysis adds a new piece of evidence to the extant literature on effort, i.e. the impact of on-the-job interpersonal relationships on effort. The results show that there exists a positive correlation between the quantity and quality of worker relations within the social enterprise with customers, volunteers, colleagues and superiors and effort.

Keywords:

• effort
• relational goods
• relationships on the job
• social cooperatives
• Italy

JEL codes:

• L31
• C21
• D00

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments, which helped to improve the manuscript. The author is grateful to Professor Borzaga for the possibility of using data provided by the 2007 Survey on Italian Social Cooperatives.

Notes

1 Results from several empirical surveys reveal that often managers themselves, rather than monetary incentives, emphasize other incentive devices to increase effort. In particular, Agell and Lundborg (1999), analysing data from interviews, reach the conclusion that creating a friendly workplace environment is important for worker effort. The authors focus on Swedish data. Bewley (1998) reaches similar results analysing US data.

2 A particular, extreme case is volunteer work that is performed by people who work for nothing and is motivated by a precise motivation that could be relational, altruistic or some other factor.