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Cooperative and Competitive Orientation among Chinese People: Scale Development and Validation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2015

Xiao-Ping Chen ,
Xiaofei Xie  and
Shiqing Chang
Xiao-Ping Chen
Affiliation:
University of Washington, USA
Xiaofei Xie
Affiliation:
University of Washington, USA
Shiqing Chang
Affiliation:
Peking University, China
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Abstract

Chinese people are known to be strong in dialectical thinking – a cognitive tendency toward the acceptance of contradiction. Based on this finding, we conceptualized cooperative and competitive orientation as two distinct constructs that represent individual beliefs about and attitudes toward the nature of their relationship with others. We hypothesized that as stable individual differences, cooperative and competitive orientation would have differential effects on people's cognition and behaviour. Adopting a contextualization approach to Chinese management research, we developed a seven-item cooperative orientation scale and a six-item competitive orientation scale that demonstrated high reliabilities and validities. A laboratory experiment using the response latency method showed that people scoring higher on cooperative orientation responded significantly faster toward words of a cooperative nature, whereas people scoring higher on competitive orientation responded significantly faster toward words of a competitive nature. A field survey in multiple Chinese organizations further showed that cooperative and competitive orientation had differential effects on employee task performance and organizational citizenship behaviour beyond the effects of the personality differences. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed in the context of work groups in Chinese organizations and beyond.

Keywords

Chinacompetitive orientationcontextualizationcooperative orientationscale developement竞争倾向合作倾向量表发展
Type
Regular Articles
Information
Management and Organization Review , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , July 2011 , pp. 353 - 379
Copyright
Copyright © International Association for Chinese Management Research 2011

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