Organizational Structure and Voluntary Participation in Collective-Good Decisions

Voluntary participation in collective-good decisions is formulated as an exercise of individual choice within a context determined by the authority structure and the agreement structure of an organization. A choice model developed by Camilleri and Berger (1967) is used to explicate the nature of a collective-good decision. Organizational variables are interpreted as determinants of the parameters of the individual's choice to participate or not. Three sets of experiments comprising 15 conditions were conducted to investigate the substantive implications of the formulation. Each condition involved multiple replicates of organizations each with eight simulated members and a subject. Participation rates calculated from the model, using estimates of utility ratios derived from the data, closely matched the rank-order of observed rates within sets of experiments and less closely matched the rank-order of the differences between those observed rates. The results were supportive of the overall argument. Implications with respect to considerations of size, efficacy and structural complexity are discussed.