PERSONALITY, ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE, AND COOPERATION - EVIDENCE FROM A BUSINESS SIMULATION

Deriving predictions from congruence theory, we explored the personal and situational sources; of cooperation by contrasting behavior under conditions of personality fit and misfit with culture in an organizati onal simulation. We assessed MBA students' disposition to cooperate an d randomly assigned them to simulated organizations that either emphas ized collectivistic or individualistic cultural values. We found that cooperative subjects in collectivistic cultures were rated by coworker s as the most cooperative; they reported working with the greatest num ber of people, and they had the strongest preferences for evaluating w ork performance on the basis of contributions to teams rather than ind ividual achievement. Results also showed that cooperative people were more responsive to the individualistic or collectivistic norms charact erizing their organization's culture: They exhibited greater differenc es in their level of cooperative behavior across the two cultures than did individualistic people. We discuss the organizational implication s of the conditions influencing behavioral expressions of personal coo perativeness.