Cooperation in contests: a model of mixed organizational culture

We use a contest framework to investigate the nature of organizational culture. Organization members decide whether to participate in the contest and if they do participate they have two possible modi operandi: be helpful or not. We state sufficient conditions, in terms of contest design, for the existence of various types of organizational culture and we show the possibility (at equilibrium) of a mixed organizational culture, i.e. the coexistence of two subcultures: a helping one and an individualistic one. We find that cooperation emerges only when prize density is sufficiently high. However, in a mixed culture the degree of cooperation decreases in the number of prizes.