Teams, which perform various functions within organizational structures centered on teams, have formed and maintained unique cultures of their own. Then, would it be positive to the individual and the team for the team culture to be in agreement with ...
Teams, which perform various functions within organizational structures centered on teams, have formed and maintained unique cultures of their own. Then, would it be positive to the individual and the team for the team culture to be in agreement with the organizational culture? In order to answer this question, this study attempts to examine the influence of team-organization cultural fit on the individual and the team on both the individual level and the team level, by conducting a research on 1,539 people in 152 teams at a large-sized engineering company in Korea.
Study 1, an individual-level study conducted on 1,539 people, focused on the influence of the degree of agreement between the team culture and organizational culture as perceived by the individual on the individual’s satisfaction toward the team and HR satisfaction. In particular, individual-organization cultural fit and individual-team cultural fit, which have been the topic of interest for a long time in previous organizational culture studies, were compared and analyzed as well, focusing on the main effect and interactive effect among the three cultural fits.
Study 1-1, which compared the main effect of the three cultural fits, discovered three major outcomes. First, P-O and P-T cultural fit displayed a significantly positive relationship with team satisfaction and HR satisfaction, which is consistent with previous studies and the positive effect of value congruence, was confirmed. Second, team-organization cultural fit exhibited a significantly negative relationship with team satisfaction and HR satisfaction, confirming that team satisfaction and HR satisfaction as perceived by the individual becomes higher when team culture and organizational culture is perceived to be different. This outcome, which is somewhat different from previous studies on cultural fit, showed that there is a positive effect when the over-culture and sub-culture are different and supported the divisional approach of organizational culture. Third, a comparison of the influence of the three cultural fits showed that the significantly positive influence of P-T cultural fit on team satisfaction and HR satisfaction was stronger than the influence of P-O cultural fit and T-O cultural fit. This confirmed that value fit with the team, which is the closest reference group with the individual, has a stronger influence on individual satisfaction than value fit with the organization.
Study 1-2, which examined the interaction between the three cultural fits, showed a significant two-way interaction and three-way interaction among the three cultural fits. The two cultural fits based on the individual (P-O and P-T cultural fit) as well as the T-O cultural fit commonly show a complementary relationship and display an interactive pattern. In other words, satisfaction is highest when cultural fit centered on the individual is high and environment-environment fit is low, whereas satisfaction lowest when cultural fit centered on the individual is low and environment-environment fit is high. It was confirmed that as for satisfaction as perceived by the individual, the agreement between the individual’s value and the environment is an important factor which precedes the agreement between the environment and the environment.
Study 2, a team-level study conducted on 152 teams, was divided into Study 2-1, which examined the main effect of team-organizational cultural fit on the team level, and Study 2-2, which investigated the interactive effect with information diversity. Moreover, by using both the team consensus method and aggregation method of individual scores, which are the two representative methods in measuring team level, the study attempted to confirm the consistency of the effect of team-organization cultural fit on the team level.
Study 2-1, which focused on the main effect of team-organization cultural fit on the team level, discovered three major outcomes. First, team-organization cultural fit on the team level displayed a marginally significant negative relationship with only the HR satisfaction on the team-level, unlike the outcome of the individual level, an outcome which was only found in the aggregation method of individual scores. Second, the influence of team-organization cultural fit on the team level differed between the support division and the operation division. A positive trend was found in the support division and a significantly negative effect was found in the operation division. Team-organization cultural fit of team-level OCP had a significantly negative relationship with team satisfaction on the team level, whereas team-organization cultural fit of team-level CVF had a significantly negative relationship with HR satisfaction on the team level, exhibiting a stronger relationship in the operation division than in the sample of the total.
Fourth, going beyond verification of the negative relationship of team-organizational cultural fit on the team level, an additional analysis was conducted on the positive influence of sub-culture, which is that it can be positive to have a different team culture and organizational culture although extreme difference might be negative, through a non-linear regression analysis. As in the case of linear regression analysis, the non-linear model displayed a significantly negative relationship only in the case of personnel policy on the team level, supporting the inverse-U curve. Thus, perception on the team level showed that team-level satisfaction is highest when there is a slight difference between the team culture and organizational culture, whereas satisfaction became lower when team culture and organizational culture were too different or too similar.
Study 2-2, which examined the interactive effect between team-organization cultural fit and team information diversity on the team level, confirmed the moderating effect of complementary relationship in team position level diversity, among the three types of information diversity—service term, position level, and level of education. Thus, HR satisfaction was highest when team-organization cultural fit on the team level was low and diversity of team position level was low, whereas HR satisfaction was lowest when team-organization cultural fit on the team level was low and diversity of team position level was high.. In particular, this was more evident when taking into account only the operation division, exhibiting a significant interactive effect in team service term diversity, team position level diversity, and team education level diversity, unlike the case where the whole organization was subject to analysis. It appears that the outcome of interaction between variables which exist internally and externally will contribute to converting the focus of team research, which was previously focused only on the internal aspect of the team, to the external aspect of the team.
This thesis is meaningful in that it expanded previous individual-environment fit research to environment-environment fit research, and that it widened the understanding of other types of fit by verifying the relationship between the individual’s internal fit and external fit as well as the team’s internal fit and external fit. Other contributions and limitations are discussed in the end.