The Reciprocity Ring
When I joined the faculty at Wharton, the world’s oldest collegiate business school, I decided to try a
giving experiment in my classroom. I announced that we would be running an exercise called the
Reciprocity Ring, which was developed by University of Michigan sociologist Wayne Baker and his
wife Cheryl at Humax. Each student would make a request to the class, and the rest of the class would
try to use their knowledge, resources, and connections to help fulfill the request. The request could be
anything meaningful in their professional or personal lives, ranging from job leads to travel tips.
In a matter of minutes, I was facing a line of students—some cynical, others anxious. One student
pronounced that the exercise wouldn’t work, because there aren’t any givers at Wharton: givers study
medicine or social work, not business. Another admitted that he would love advice from more
experienced peers on strengthening his candidacy for consulting jobs, but he knew they wouldn’t help
him, since they were competing with him for these positions.
Soon, these students watched in disbelief as their peers began to use their networks to help one
another. A junior named Alex announced that he loved amusement parks, and he came to Wharton in
the hopes of one day running Six Flags. He wasn’t sure how to get started—could anyone help him
break into the industry? A classmate, Andrew, raised his hand and said he had a weak tie to the
former CEO of Six Flags. Andrew went out on a limb to connect them, and a few weeks later, Alex
received invaluable career advice from the ex-CEO. A senior named Michelle confided that she had a
friend whose growth was stunted due to health problems, and couldn’t find clothes that fit. A fellow
senior, Jessica, had an uncle in the fashion business, and she contacted him for help. Three months
later, custom garments arrived at the doorstep of Michelle’s friend.
Wayne Baker has led Reciprocity Rings at many companies, from GM to Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Oftentimes, he brings leaders and managers together from competing companies in the same industry
and invites them to make requests and help one another. In one session, a pharmaceutical executive
was about to pay an outside vendor $50,000 to synthesize a strain of the PCS alkaloid. The executive
asked if anyone could help find a cheaper alternative. One of the group members happened to have
slack capacity in his lab, and was able to do it for free.
The Reciprocity Ring can be an extremely powerful experience. Bud Ahearn, a group president at
CH2M HILL, noted that leaders in his company “are strong endorsers, not only because of the
hundreds of thousands of annual dollar value, but because of the remarkable potential to advance the
quality of our ‘whole’ lives.” Baker has asked executives to estimate the dollar value and time saved
in participating for two and a half hours. Thirty people in an engineering and architectural consulting
firm estimated savings exceeding $250,000 and fifty days. Fifteen people in a global pharmaceutical
firm estimated savings of more than $90,000 and sixty-seven days.
Personally, after running the Reciprocity Ring with leaders, managers, and employees from
companies such as IBM, Citigroup, Estée Lauder, UPS, Novartis, and Boeing, I’ve been amazed by
the requests that have been fulfilled—from landing a coveted job at Google to finding a mentor to
receiving autographed memorabilia from a child’s favorite professional football player. But before
this happens, just as my Wharton students did, many participants question whether others will actually
give them the help that they need. Each time, I respond by asking whether they might be
underestimating the givers in their midst.