Productivity in contests: Organizational culture and personality effects

We study the interaction of organizational culture and personal prosocial orientation in team work where teams compete against each other. In a computerized lab experiment with minimal group design, we prime subjects to two alternative organizational cultures emphasizing either self-enhancement or self-trancendence. We find that effort is highest in self-trancendent teams and prosocially oriented subjects perform better than proself-oriented under that culture. In any other value-culture-mechanism constellation, performance is worse and/or prosocials and proselves do not differ in provided effort. These findings point out the importance of a triple-fit of preferences, organizational culture and incentive mechanism.