Różnice w zachowaniach rywalizacyjnych i kooperacyjnych podejmowanych przez grupy menedżerów i młodzieży
Irena Pilch, Renata Rosmus
DOI:
Rocznik: 1999 Tom: 5 Numer: 4
Strony: 369-374
The article presents a comparative analysis of cooperative and competitive behaviour of groups of managers and students in the "prisoner's dilemma" game. The eight-stage "blue – and – green" game used in this research, left free choice and changes of strategy during the contest to the examined teams. Seventy two teams of 3-5 persons took part in this research: 36 teams of managers and 36 teams of students. Both managers and students definitely preferred the competitive strategy in the contest. In spite of this, significant differences between the compared groups appeared. The teams of managers chose the cooperative options more often and, consequently, this group achieved definitely better results than the group of young people. The teams of students less frequently used the option of communicating with the partner provided in this game, and if they decided to enter into a contract, they would break it more often. The results of the research are in agreement with the expectations of the social exchange theory, according to which in a competitive situation the proper aim of the group can be substituted by the will of getting advantage over the partner, even at the cost of one's own loss. Another possible reason for such a strong domination of the competitive strategy in the game might have been the tendency to social competition initiated in the situation of research. The following possible reasons for different results between groups of managers and students have been suggested: different life and professional experience of the members of these groups, more intensive training of competitive behaviour in the group of young people, the age of examined persons as a factor predisposing to taking up competition as a form of defense of group identity.