An Investigation of Missouri Secondary Agriculture Teachers’ Perceptions of Interorganizational Cooperative Behavior

Abstract

Interorganizational teams have the potential to accomplish more than the sum of individual efforts of members working independently, provided that members share similar goals and tasks. Thus, an interorganizational team consisting of organizations that share similar roots and educational and outreach objectives would seem logical. Subjects of this study were randomly selected secondary agriculture teachers (n = 140) in Missouri. Factors that teachers perceived as important to cooperation and the perceived affect the factors had on relationships with 4–H youth development personnel were investigated guided by the modified team performance and training framework (Cannon–Bowers, Tannenbaum, Salas, & Volpe, 1995). Mean weighted discrepancy scores were calculated to determine deficiencies between the perceived and desired levels of cooperative activities, as perceived by secondary agriculture teachers. Results indicated that interorganizational behavior was indeed desirable to secondary agriculture teachers. However, despite their desire to cooperate, the perceived level of cooperation was considerably lower than the desired level of cooperation.