Eric Bohlman wrote:
"As Alfie Kohn points out in _No Contest_, Americans have come to view the
purpose of competition as making bad things happen to one's "opponents"
rather than making good things happen to oneself".
To add a few thoughts to this:
Kohn mentions that both competition and cooperation are inherent in human
nature. It is competition that gets learnt in preference to cooperative
behaviour.
IMO two reasons are -
a) Competitive behaviour seems to be addictive.(correct me if I am wrong)
b) Competition is the game plan because of fear. To take off from Erics
example of GM and Ford - I assume GM chose its game plan because wiping
out Ford would ensure their presence in the market. GM assumes, if we
don't - they will. A cooperative solution would have been probably what
Eric mentioned but a lot cheaper for GM.
(Please note, I am no expert on Ford and GM - just using the example. It
just triggered an ecological fear since ecology is the subject title)
Ford and GM have extended their competition into our Indian market. They
are not alone. What is going to happen to our ecology because of their
competition? If we were to eventually get seduced by these car companies,
to ape USA with one or two cars a family? Our cities are becoming
increasingly polluted with now less than 10% of the families owning a car
in these cities. Thanks to poverty/low income. Knowing the nature of
competition for the market share, these companies will come with
interesting solutions. The percentage of families owning cars will
increase? etc.
If these companies don't redifine the Indian customers transport needs,
Which is better, to be poor or polluted? A systems question.
Thomas P Benjamin
benjamin@fac.irm.ernet.in
--"Thomas Benjamin" <BENJAMIN@fac.irm.ernet.in>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>