I have saved and reread and reflected on the recent posts from Don
Dwiggins, Jason Smith, Peter Jones, Richard Goodale, Fred Nickols and Ben
Compton. It has been very helpful to me for us to discuss specific
examples which illustrate our views of the broad concepts of cooperation,
competition and individual contribution.
Jason and Peter asked me to explain my vision of an alternative to free
market competition. Frankly, I'm still struggling with the issue at the
individual level. I have a strong conviction that competition in families
is destructive and one of the tests I apply to policies and practices in
the workplace is: Would I do this to my children? When the answer is
clearly "No!", I think further about the issue.
Is it possible that some of us are defining the word "competition"
differently. I use the term to describe an activity in which there is
mutually exclusive goal attainment, i.e., my success requires your
failure. This is a "zero-sum" game. To be competitive, I must desire to
see you "lose".
Ben described an extremely successful work team he was a part of as being
both cooperative and competitive. Then he described cooperative behaviors
of the team members. Perhaps I missed something, but I didn't hear a
description of any behaviors in which the team members were competing with
each other. But perhaps he meant that Team A was competing with Team B.
He did say that his team was the best-performing team in the division.
Now I have to ask myself if I want my children to cooperate to "beat" my
sister's children, perhaps for the attention or inheritance of their
grandparents. We've all seen, perhaps experienced, dysfunctional
families. Why would we feel these same behaviors are admirable in the
workplace?
Would someone give me an example of competitive, i.e. win-lose, behavior
within an organization that they feel is both good for the individual
competitors and good for the organization?
Best Regards,
Roxanne
--Roxanne Abbas mailto:rabbas@comp-web.com http://www.comp-web.com
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