Discipline, Internal Motivations, And Cooperation in a Rural Production Cooperative‪.‬

Abstract A disciplinary system is an important mechanism to build the trust and commitment essential for maintaining effective organization for collective action. A case study in southern Brazil examines a situation in which the lack of effective monitoring and enforcement contributed to the decline of a cooperative, and asks why these activities were ineffectively applied. The literature suggests that the lack of application would be because the provision of monitoring and enforcement is itself a second-order public goods problem in which the whole cooperative benefits from the maintenance of discipline, but the costs fall on individuals who work to maintain it. This case study reveals contextual factors related to motivations for cooperation which may be more important in explaining the reluctance to impose discipline and the subsequent decline of trust and commitment among cooperative members. The study suggests that the components of an effective disciplinary system include rule formulation, monitoring and enforcement activities, accompanied by norms regarding the role of discipline in relation to overall cooperative objectives, and regarding the roles and responsibilities of leadership and general membership. A disciplinary system will be most effective when it is applied with attention to how it affects both external and internal motivations.