Issue 3
Vol. 41
1999

Culture, Groups, and Coordination Problems
Yoshihisa Kashima

Group task performance depends largely on the extent to which group members can successfully solve the coordination problem (Schelling, 1960; Lewis, 1968). It is the problem of coordinating group members’ task relevant actions, while maintaining a necessary level of interpersonal trust and group cohesiveness. This paper offers a preliminary analysis of action from a cultural psychological viewpoint, examines the role of culture in solving the coordination problem, and explores implications for considering the effects of cultural diversity on group task performance. In particular, it is suggested that the problem for culturally diverse task performance groups is analogous to the discovery of a hidden profile (Stasser, 1988), that is, pooling together unshared action resources which can nonetheless provide an optimal strategy for group task performance.

Key words: group task performance, interpersonal trust, group cohesiveness

Psychologische Beiträge, Volume 41, 1999, p. 237-251

Yoshihisa Kashima
Department of Psychology
University of Melbourne
Victoria 3010, Australia
E-mail: y.kashima@psych.unimelb.edu.au