Shadow of the Future, Risk Aversion, and Employee Cooperation

In this paper, we examine whether and how the shadow of the future and risk aversion affect employee cooperation with the employer. We distinguish, formalize and test two conflicting arguments as used in the literature, which we denote the reward argument and the relation argument. Whereas the reward argument predicts that risk aversion affects cooperation in a negative way, the relation argument predicts a positive effect of risk aversion on cooperation. We show that both arguments are consistent with the view that a longer shadow of the future increases cooperation. Hypotheses are tested against survey data obtained from two samples of Dutch employees (N =109 and N = 213, respectively). The results suggest moderate support for the relation argument.