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Cooperation in organizations
Edited by Prof Dr Rene Schalk and Dr Petru L. Curseu
Introduction
Understanding the impact of cross-cultural diversity on cooperation and conflict resolution processes in teams is a critical factor for team success and organizational effectiveness. Until recently, this issue was mainly studied in geographically dispersed teams, with members from different cultural contexts ([6] Earley and Gibson, 1998). Nowadays, due to globalization and increased population mobility, teams operating in one cultural context are increasingly cross-culturally diverse. Cooperation is essential whenever people have to coordinate activities of differentiated tasks ([39] Wagner, 1995). Therefore, cooperation in culturally diverse teams is a significant topic of organizational research ([39] Wagner, 1995).
The individualism-collectivism "cultural syndrome" has consistently been found to be a significant difference among cultures in a large number of studies ([6] Earley and Gibson, 1998; [9] Hofstede, 1980; [21] Oyserman et al. , 2002; [33] Triandis, 1996). Collectivists conform more to group norms than individualists, and have more cooperative groups than individualists. The cooperation of individualists, on the other hand, is instrumental: when they can only achieve their individual goals in groups, individualists do not differ in their levels of cooperative behaviour from collectivists ([39] Wagner, 1995).
Differences in cultural values between collectivistic and individualistic societies influence attitudes toward conflict and conflict management ([42] Kirkbride et al. , 1991; [15] Lee and Rogan, 1991; [16] Leung, 1988; [27] Taggar and Haines, 2006; [29] Ting-Toomey et al. , 1991; [40] Wheeler, 2002). Conflict with out-groups is perceived as natural by collectivists. Collectivists tend to see more differences between the in- and out-groups, and they do not consider it a virtue to put themselves into other people's shoes ([31] Triandis, 1994). When dealing with the in-group, on the other hand, the primary focus of collectivists is to avoid actions that will strain relationships and lead to weakening and dissolving the relationship. Individualists nevertheless tolerate and are able to cope with high levels of within-group conflict ([17] Leung, 1997). Therefore, group members' cultural values are certainly related to the way members deal with intra-group conflicts. Research to date mostly focused on making group level inferences by averaging levels of individualism-collectivism of the individual group members and little to no interest was shown in conceptualizing cultural values...