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Feeling Good about Giving: The Benefits (and Costs) of Self-Interested Charitable Behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Lalin Anik

    (Harvard Business School)

  • Lara B. Aknin

    (University of British Columbia)

  • Michael I. Norton

    (Harvard Business School, Marketing Unit)

  • Elizabeth W. Dunn

    (University of British Columbia)

Abstract

In knowledge-intensive settings such as product or software development, fluid teams of individuals with different sets of experience are tasked with projects that are critical to the success of their organizations. Although building teams from individuals with diverse prior experience is increasingly necessary, prior work examining the relationship between experience and performance fails to find a consistent effect of diversity in experience on performance. The problem is that diversity in experience improves a team's information processing capacity and knowledge base, but also creates coordination challenges. We hypothesize that team familiarity - team members' prior experience working with one another - is one mechanism that helps teams leverage the benefits of diversity in team member experience by alleviating coordination problems that diversity creates. We use detailed project- and individual-level data from an Indian software services firm to examine the effects of team familiarity and diversity in experience on performance for software development projects. We find the interaction of team familiarity and diversity in experience has a complementary effect on a project being delivered on time and on budget. In team familiarity, we identify one mechanism for capturing the performance benefits of diversity in experience and provide insight into how the management of experience accumulation affects team performance.

Suggested Citation

  • Lalin Anik & Lara B. Aknin & Michael I. Norton & Elizabeth W. Dunn, 2009. "Feeling Good about Giving: The Benefits (and Costs) of Self-Interested Charitable Behavior," Harvard Business School Working Papers 10-012, Harvard Business School.
    • Handle: RePEc:hbs:wpaper:10-012
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    Cited by:

    1. Qianping Ren & Maoliang Ye, 2017. "Donations Make People Happier: Evidence from the Wenchuan Earthquake," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 132(1), pages 517-536, May.
    2. Shuyang Wang & Xiaoyu Wu & Zhilin Li & Jing-Hua Zhang, 2021. "Tax-Exempt Status and Associated Factors among Charitable Foundations in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-15, April.
    3. Lenka Fiala & Charles N. Noussair, 2017. "Charitable Giving, Emotions, And The Default Effect," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(4), pages 1792-1812, October.
    4. Perroni, Carlo & Scharf, Kimberley & Smith, Sarah & Talavera, Oleksandr & Vi, Linh, 2024. "Local Crime and Prosocial Attitudes : Evidence from Charitable Donations," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1493, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    5. Greyling, Talita & Rossouw, Stephanié, 2024. "Vaccination uptake, happiness and emotions: using a supervised machine learning approach," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1482, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    6. Mendini, Monica & Peter, Paula C. & Maione, Salvatore, 2022. "The potential positive effects of time spent on Instagram on consumers’ gratitude, altruism, and willingness to donate," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 16-26.
    7. Wang, Xia & Tong, Luqiong, 2015. "Hide the light or let it shine? Examining the factors influencing the effect of publicizing donations on donors’ happiness," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 418-424.
    8. Stephanie Owings-Edwards, 2021. "Charity Case: A Class Competition that Combats Economics Students' Proclivity Toward Self-Interested Behavior," Journal of Economics Teaching, Journal of Economics Teaching, vol. 6(1), pages 40-52, May.
    9. Talita Greyling & Stephanie Rossouw & Tamanna Adhikari, 2021. "A Tale of Three Countries: What is the Relationship Between COVID‐19, Lockdown and Happiness?," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 89(1), pages 25-43, March.
    10. Jan-Emmanuel De Neve & Ed Diener & Louis Tay & Cody Xuereb, 2013. "The Objective Benefits of Subjective Well-Being," CEP Discussion Papers dp1236, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    11. Viole, Fred & Nawrocki, David, 2013. "An analysis of heterogeneous utility benchmarks in a zero return environment," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 190-198.
    12. Stephanie A. Heger & Robert Slonim, 2022. "Altruism Begets Altruism," CESifo Working Paper Series 9522, CESifo.
    13. Rudd, Melanie & Aaker, Jennifer & Norton, Michael I., 2013. "Getting the Most out of Giving: Pursuing Concretely-Framed Prosocial Goals Maximizes Happiness," Research Papers 2129, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    14. Greyling, Talita & Rossouw, Stephanie & Adhikari, Tamanna, 2020. "A tale of three countries: How did Covid-19 lockdown impact happiness?," GLO Discussion Paper Series 584, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    15. Adel A. Al-Wugayan, 2023. "Celebrity appeal effectiveness in donating to the cause: Popular Culture vs. Religious Celebrities," International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, Springer;International Association of Public and Non-Profit Marketing, vol. 20(2), pages 369-391, June.
    16. Lorna Zischka, 2016. "The Interaction between Prosocial (Giving) Behaviours and Social Cohesion," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2016-07, Department of Economics, University of Reading.
    17. Stefanos Balaskas & Aliki Panagiotarou & Maria Rigou, 2023. "Impact of Personality Traits on Small Charitable Donations: The Role of Altruism and Attitude towards an Advertisement," Societies, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-17, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Diversity; Experience; Knowledge; Software; Team Familiarity;
    All these keywords.

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