Collaborative Research: An Experimental Approach to Organizational Culture

组织文化是研究者和管理者都熟悉的概念。 它经常被认为是公司效率的源泉，或者是公司调整或合并中出现问题的原因。 然而，尽管它的熟悉，它一直很难捕捉到底是什么组织文化，以及它如何影响企业。 我们提出了一系列的研究，使用实验程序来创造一些非常类似于实验室培养的东西。 文化的基本要素，基于研究文献中的共同线索，是它是通过组织成员之间的共享历史和理解而产生的，它取决于组织的历史，因此在企业之间差异很大，并且它允许公司的成员协调活动，从而更有效地执行。我们的实验使用了一个任务，由两个或两个以上的主题组成，通过反复的互动来发展文化。 在我们的实验中，语言是文化的隐喻--受试者需要发展一种方法，用简单的短语来指代未知的复杂物体，以便快速完成任务。 受试者发展的这些“文化”最终是基于小组在执行任务时的共同历史（他们最初关注对象的哪些方面？），他们最终会变得与众不同，并且在不同的群体之间差异很大（例如：一组人把一个物体称为“Macarena”，而另一组人把同一物体称为“咖啡杯”），and they end结束up allowing允许the groups组to coordinate协调and improve提高efficiency效率（一个词的描述使小组能够快速地共同识别物体）。我们最初的实验调查了当两个独立发展文化的小组--and have become成为efficient有效at performing执行the task任务- are merged合并. 毫不奇怪，文化差异会导致合并后的团队执行任务的效率降低。此外，受试者没有意识到即使是这些简单的文化融合也会有多么困难，导致他们高估了合并后的公司。最后，一旦出现文化冲突，受试者会将失败的根源归咎于其他受试者的无能，而不是整合不同文化的困难。 未来的实验将进一步探讨最后一个现象，通过更仔细地检查受试者将合并失败归咎于他人而不是文化不相容的程度。 其中一个含义是，管理者可能会过于频繁地解雇员工，将员工的低绩效归咎于他们的无能，而不是文化融合的需要。 我们还将探讨文化融合如何与组织成员是否具有共同的或相反的激励措施有关。

Organizational culture is a familiar concept to both researchers andmanagers. It is frequently cited as the source of a firm's efficiency or asthe cause of problems in firm adaptation or mergers. However, in spite ofits familiarity, it has been difficult to capture exactly whatorganizational culture is and how it affects firms. We propose a series ofstudies that use an experimental procedure to create something very similarto culture in the laboratory. The basic elements of culture, based oncommon threads in the research literature, are that it is something thatarises through shared history and understanding between members of anorganization, that it depends on the organization's history and cantherefore vary greatly between firms, and that it allows members of a firmto coordinate activity and therefore perform more efficiently.Our experiments use a task that allows "firms" consisting of two or moresubjects to develop culture through repeated interaction. In ourexperiments, language serves as a metaphor for culture - subjects need todevelop a way to refer to unknown and complex objects using simple, shortphrases in order to perform a task quickly. These "cultures" that subjectsdevelop end up being based on the group's shared history in performing thetask (what aspects of the objects did they focus on initially?), they end upbeing idiosyncratic and varying greatly between groups (as an example: onegroup came to refer to an object as "Macarena" while another group referredto the same object as "coffee cups"), and they end up allowing the groups tocoordinate and improve efficiency (the one word descriptions allowed groupsto jointly identify objects quickly).Our initial experiments investigate what happens when two groups that havedeveloped culture independently - and have become efficient at performingthe task - are merged. Not surprisingly, differences in cultures lead todecreases in the efficiency with which the merged group performs the task.In addition, subjects are not aware of how difficult it will be to integrateeven these simple cultures, leading them to overvalue the merged firm.Finally, once culture conflict arises, subjects blame the source of thefailures on incompetence on the part of other subjects rather than on thedifficulty in integrating different cultures. Future experiments willfurther explore the last phenomenon by more closely examining the extent towhich subjects place the blame for merger failure on others rather than onculture incompatibility. One implication is that managers may fireemployees too frequently, blaming low performance on their incompetencerather than on the need for cultural integration. We will also explore howcultural integration is related to whether members of an organization havecommon or opposed incentives.