Does a Cooperative Values Statement Impact Predicted Transfer Prices?

This study investigates how a cooperative values statement, which is a corporate statement promoting cooperation as a desired employee behavior, impacts predicted transfer prices. We expect a cooperative values statement to enhance the salience of an organizational perspective and increase feelings of attachment to a part produced by the selling division. However, we predict a larger increase in psychological ownership for buying relative to selling managers, due to their lower initial attachment to the part. Therefore, we hypothesize that the presence of a cooperative values statement has a larger impact on the predicted transfer prices of buying relative to selling managers. Evidence from our primary experiment confirms our prediction. A supplemental experiment shows that the cooperative values statement increases buyers’ psychological ownership feelings but not sellers’ (higher) feelings of attachment. Overall, our results suggest that buying, but not selling, managers respond to the nudge created by a cooperative values statement.