Kevin M. Kniffin

Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management
Cornell University

Organizational Benefits of Commensality

March 19, 2012
AAG008 5:00 pm

Abstract

Eating together in groups – commensality – was part of a bundle of
activities during most of human evolution.  In contemporary
organizations and environments, it remains the case that people make a
practice of eating with others even though modern inventions such as
refrigerators, restaurants, and railroads have unbundled food
consumption from food procurement and preparation.  In this talk,
three new studies will be presented.  First, a field project will be
discussed that explores the value of communal food preparation and
consumption inside firehouses in a large urban department.  Second, an
experimental economics study will be reviewed that tests the degree to
which people are cooperative as a function of eating.  And, third, I
will report on a pair of studies that obliquely address the degree to
which people believe that eating together involves something “more
than food.”

Biography

Kniffin presently works as a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell
University in the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management.
Building on his graduate studies at Binghamton, Kniffin studies the
mechanisms that facilitate cooperation within contemporary groups
against the backdrop of evolutionary perspectives.  He has contributed
papers to journals including: Group & Organization Management,
Evolution and Human Behavior, and Human Nature.

Readings

2010 Group & Organization Management paper on workplace gossip (w/ DSW)

2009 Journal of Bioeconomics review article on salary dispersion within firms