ABSTRACT
Human communities and organizations, including those organizations, such as firms, whose role within the modern economy is especially critical, rest largely on contracts and ‘repeated games’, and hence on the logic of ‘cautious’ form of reciprocity we have just introduced. But there are other forms of reciprocity that, I claim, are also and above all necessary forms that seem not to be adequately explained in terms of the incentives or the controls of reciprocity in contractual relations, nor in terms of a high enough probability of repeating the game with the same partners. Quoting Bowles and Gintis: ‘Among humans however, we do not doubt the importance of repeated interactions and other structures that reward cooperators with higher fitness or other payoffs, rendering seemingly selfish acts a form of mutualism. While an important part of the explanation of human cooperation, there are several reasons for doubting the adequacy of this explanation’ (2004, p. 18).
