Dear Colleagues,
Apologies for cross-postings.
I am writing to invite you to submit a paper to our track, titled "Tragedy of the Commons at Work: How to Mitigate Social Dilemmas" for EURAM 2010.
The Call for Proposals is copied below. We hope that you will consider submitting your papers to this track. The deadline for the submission of the papers is 18 January 2010.
Yours,
Olivia Kyriakidou
Mustafa Ozbilgin
Karsten Jonsen
Stephen Garcia
Ahu Tatli
TRACK 32:
Tragedy of the Commons at Work: How to Mitigate Social Dilemmas
Track Chairs:
Karsten Jonsen (Organisation Coordinator)
Research Fellow, IMD, Lausanne, Switzerland
e-mail:
karsten.jonsen@imd.ch
Stephen Garcia, Assistant Professor of Psychology and of Organizational Studies at the
University of Michigan.
Co-track Chairs:
Olivia Kyriakidou, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the Department of
Business Administration, Athens University of Economics and Business.
Mustafa F. Özbilgin, Professor of Human Resource Management at the Norwich Business
School, University of East Anglia
Ahu Tatli, Lecturer in International Human Resource Management in the School of Business
and Management at Queen Mary, University of London
Abstract:
Tragedy of the Commons is a concept rooted in Hardin’s (1968) seminal article in Science,
describing a situation where a number of herdsmen graze their herds on a limited area of
common grass. Each herdsman rationally decides to increase his herd size which eventually leads
to a disaster and a collapse of the commons, as the consumption exceeded the available good
(grass). Hence, a true conflict – social dilemma (Tullock, 1974) - between individual
optimization and collective benefit.
As such Tragedy of the Commons is a classic and meaningful concept relevant even today in
understanding business and management dilemmas that occur in pursuit of individual
optimization and the collective good in the context of work. The Tragedy of the Commons, have
been used by scientists in many disciplines such as population control, economics, sociology,
biology, etc. (Messick and Brewer, 1983). Social dilemmas are used extensively by social
psychologists and behavioral economists. The focus for much of this usage has been on the
individual versus group/society.
However, the Tragedy of Commons is an umbrella concept that is also applicable at the
organizational level, i.e. comparing organizational responsibility and optimization with societal
expectations and objectives, as well as groups within organizations vis-à-vis the collective good.
Bazerman & Watkins (2004) refer to “special interest groups” with little or no concern for the
overall effect of their goals on society, even when the gains to their group are much smaller than
the total social cost. The tragedy of the commons concept can serve to bridge a wide range of
relatively disparate fields of study and writing including competition, cooperation, organizational
design, negotiation, change, conflict resolution, corporate social responsibility, ethics,
empowerment and collective action, discrimination, inclusion and diversity at work. Therefore,
the proposed track will welcome transdisciplinarity, allowing for dialogue across disciplinary
perspectives and relational perspectives problematizing the multilevel nature of the phenomena.
Whilst being excited about the conceptual power of the Tragedy of the Commons, we should
keep in mind the nature of Tragedy, namely that it is a song of sacrifice, symbolizing the fact that
we have important societal and human issues that we fully understand and yet have not been able
to find relevant and applicable solutions to.
We would like to invite conceptual, empirical and methodological papers which help us address
the Tragedy of the Commons and offer theoretical explanations and practical solutions.
Dr Olivia Kyriakidou
Assistant Professor in Organizational Behavior
Athens University of Economics and Business
Department of Business Administration
Patision 76, 10434, Athens, Greece
tel: +30 2108203384
email:
okyriakidou@aueb.gr