Roxanne Abbas wrote:
>I can understand that within formal competitive situations, the
>participants must cooperate on setting the rules of the game, i.e. we all
>agree not to intentionally cause physical injury to the opponent. I
>cannot understand how within a competitive situation participants would
>actually help their rivals or strive to work cooperatively for what
>Webster calls "mutual benefit". Did Dean Smith, North Carolina basketball
>coach, often counsel his arch-rival at Duke? If a Coca-Cola chemist was
>having trouble with the beverage formula, would he call Pepsi for help?
Counselling arch-rivals is an everyday situation. For example, two
players are battling for supremacy in the championship of their local
chess club in a crucial game. After the game is over, they analyse what
happened, and what should have happened. The loser learns from the
winner, and borrows one of the winner's chess books to further improve
their ability. On another level, the two people co-operate as President
and Secretary of the chess club.
In the field of science, there is fierce competition for Nobel and other
prizes. It would seem that this would create deep secrecy about
experiments, to prevent others snatching the glory. But the scientific
community has a tradition of publishing its results, so they can be
replicated and expanded on. In the long run, this co-operation benefits
all scientists, since the rapid cross-fertilisation of ideas makes
progress infinitely faster.
--Richard Hills <staffdev@ozemail.com.au>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>