Background. Organisational culture in the context of cooperative relationships is a viable research area. However, based on literature review the influence of organisational culture on these relationships is not a primary research topic of Polish or foreign scientists. Hence, this paper was designed to fill in the identified gap.
Research aims. The aim of this paper is to indicate the relationship between the shape of organisational culture of Polish companies and beneficialness of the shape of cooperative relations between these companies with particular kinds of cooperators. The theoretical part of this article was devoted to identifying the role of cooperative relations in the contemporary economic environment and description of the concept of organisational culture, including its influence on cooperation between companies. The empirical part of this paper was devoted to the description of the conducted research and its results.
Methodology. The study was conducted in early 2016 on a random sample of 97 Polish companies, i.e. companies that are based in the Republic of Poland. The survey questionnaire was sent to 493 companies (regardless of size, industry, and geographical region), 114 of which responded with answers. In the process of verification of the consistency of the received responses, 17 of them were rejected due to inaccuracies and other defects. The survey used the respondents’ indications of prevailing values in relations with employees, which describe the organisational culture and the indication of the beneficialness of the shape of cooperative relationships with suppliers, customers, and co-opetitors (in the framework of coopetitive relations). The chi-squared independence tests were used to demonstrate the dependencies.
Key findings. In conclusion, it turned out that the key to the beneficial shape of cooperative relationships can be found in the presence of preferred values of flexibility and freedom of action and the orientation of internal affairs. However, the preference of the mentioned values only affects the beneficialness of the shape of the cooperative relations with the customers.
