Hierarchies and the Survival of Prisoners of War During World War II

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Holderness, Clifford G.; Pontiff, Jeffrey
• 署名单位: Boston College
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.1120.1532
• 发表日期: 2012
• 页码: 1873-1886
• 关键词: Hierarchy; MARKETS; centralization; decentralization; Organizational structure

摘要

Using a comprehensive database of American prisoners of war during World War IT, we find that survival from captivity generally declines as the hierarchy of a prisoner's group becomes steeper or more closely matches the military's established hierarchy. There is no evidence that survival is enhanced by being held in more hierarchical groups. One interpretation of these findings that is consistent with survivors' accounts is that the military's hierarchy was too inflexible to adapt from the battlefield to captivity and this inflexibility impeded trading among the prisoners.