Chapter 96 Growing Organizational Culture in the Laboratory The states of the world are possible sequences of pictures that both the manager and employee have in front of them. The pictures are of complex office environments in which there are several people objects and activities. The pictures all overlap substantially in content but also all have several unique elements. More interestingly perhaps subjects underestimated the difficulty of integrating these very simple forms of culture. Prior to the merger they elicited estimates from all subjects about the average performance of the merged firm in the 10 post merger rounds. One subject would receive a monetary reward for making a more accurate prediction. This produces a situation where it is incentive compatible for subjects to state their true belief of the post merger firms performance. The results clearly indicate that subjects overestimate the value of a merged firm.