IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ratsoc/v2y1990i1p35-66.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Participation in Voluntary Organizations and Group Size

Author

Listed:
  • JEROEN WEESIE

    (University of Utrecht)

Abstract

Participation in collective action is hard to understand as rational behavior unless strong intrinsic benefits or selective social or economic incentives are assumed. This article describes the Status Competition Model for organizations in which members are motivated to participate for selective social rewards like the status attained from an annual “Medal of Honor.†Status is awarded on the basis of relative voluntary contributions. Using this model, the set of active members and its relation with the size of membership is studied. The number of volunteers is characterized in terms of the individual costs and benefits of participation. It is deduced that active members are necessarily very homogeneous with respect to a one-dimensional parameter of their costs and benefits. Hence the number of active members will be small if members differ nontrivially in their costs and benefits. Under some additional assumptions, it is argued that in similar kinds of organizations, the number of active members is proportional to the square root of the number of members.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeroen Weesie, 1990. "Participation in Voluntary Organizations and Group Size," Rationality and Society, , vol. 2(1), pages 35-66, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:ratsoc:v:2:y:1990:i:1:p:35-66
    DOI: 10.1177/1043463190002001003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1043463190002001003
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1043463190002001003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lazear, Edward P & Rosen, Sherwin, 1981. "Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 841-864, October.
    2. Glenn C. Loury, 1979. "Market Structure and Innovation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 93(3), pages 395-410.
    3. Jean Tirole, 1988. "The Theory of Industrial Organization," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262200716, April.
    4. Reinganum, Jennifer F, 1984. "Practical Implications of Game Theoretic Models of R&D," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(2), pages 61-66, May.
    5. Martin McGuire, 1974. "Group size, group homo-geneity, and the aggregate provision of a pure public good under cournot behavior," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 107-126, June.
    6. Rosen, Sherwin, 1986. "Prizes and Incentives in Elimination Tournaments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 701-715, September.
    7. Frank, Robert H, 1984. "Are Workers Paid Their Marginal Products?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(4), pages 549-571, September.
    8. Kamien,Morton I. & Schwartz,Nancy L., 1982. "Market Structure and Innovation," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521293853, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Galasso, Alberto & Mitchell, Matthew & Virag, Gabor, 2018. "A theory of grand innovation prizes," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 343-362.
    2. Konrad, Kai A., 2007. "Strategy in contests: an introduction [Strategie in Turnieren – eine Einführung]," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Processes and Governance SP II 2007-01, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    3. Raymond De Bondt & Jan Vandekerckhove, 2012. "Reflections on the Relation Between Competition and Innovation," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 7-19, March.
    4. Markus LANG & Alexander RATHKE & Marco RUNKEL, 2010. "The Economic Consequences Of Foreigner Rules In National Sports Leagues," Region et Developpement, Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var, vol. 31, pages 47-64.
    5. Flavio DelbonoBy & Luca Lambertini, 2022. "Innovation and product market concentration: Schumpeter, arrow, and the inverted U-shape curve [Lessons from schumpeterian growth theory]," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 74(1), pages 297-311.
    6. Konrad, Kai A., 2014. "Search duplication in research and design spaces — Exploring the role of local competition," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 222-228.
    7. Oded Stark & Walter Hyll, 2011. "On the Economic Architecture of the Workplace: Repercussions of Social Comparisons among Heterogeneous Workers," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(2), pages 349-375.
    8. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Grunewald, Andreas & Kräkel, Matthias, 2017. "Fake News," IZA Discussion Papers 11207, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Matthias Kräkel, 2006. "Splitting Leagues," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 88(1), pages 21-48, June.
    11. Robert H. Frank & Philip J. Cook, 2013. "Winner-Take-All Markets," Studies in Microeconomics, , vol. 1(2), pages 131-154, December.
    12. P.-J. Jost & M. Kräkel, 2005. "Preemptive behavior in sequential-move tournaments with heterogeneous agents," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 245-252, November.
    13. Roger Guesnerie & Jean Tirole, 1985. "L'économie de la recherche-développement : introduction à certains travaux théoriques," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 36(5), pages 843-872.
    14. M. Martin Boyer & Hernán Ortiz‐Molina, 2008. "Career Concerns of Top Executives, Managerial Ownership and CEO Succession," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(3), pages 178-193, May.
    15. Helmut Dietl & Egon Franck & Martin Grossmann & Markus Lang, 2009. "Contest Theory and its Applications in Sports," Working Papers 0105, University of Zurich, Institute for Strategy and Business Economics (ISU).
    16. Bingley, P. & Eriksson, T, 2001. "Pay Spread and Skewness. Employee Effort and Firm Productivity," Papers 01-2, Aarhus School of Business - Department of Economics.
    17. Sami Dakhlia & Paul Pecorino, 2006. "Rent-seeking with scarce talent: A model of preemptive hiring," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 129(3), pages 475-486, December.
    18. S. Keith Berry, 2006. "Firm Incentives for Invention Prizes with Multiple Winners," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 32(1), pages 83-95, Winter.
    19. Masahiro Okuno-Fujiwara, 1991. "Industrial Policy in Japan: A Political Economy View," NBER Chapters, in: Trade with Japan: Has the Door Opened Wider?, pages 271-304, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Fu, Qiang & Wu, Zenan, 2020. "On the optimal design of biased contests," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(4), November.
    21. Cedric Duvinage & Peter-J. Jost, 2019. "The Role of Referees in Professional Sports Contests," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 20(8), pages 1014-1050, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ratsoc:v:2:y:1990:i:1:p:35-66. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.