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WDYT?: Compete or Cooperate?

Lindsay Starke

In your work life, do you find cooperating or competing more effective?

 

Share your stories in the comments!

 

 

photo from U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

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Lindsay Starke
9 months ago

I personally find cooperation works best in the long run. Of course, I think that women find ourselves at a bit of a disadvantage in that regard—aggression isn't positively looked upon among us. I worry sometimes that by being *too* accommodating, I'm actually doing myself a big disservice. It's hard to figure out the best plan of action!

Nina (Antonia)
8 months ago

Be agressive by only cooperating with people better than you! Women tend to believe that we have to proof ourselves first before reaching for higher grounds. Forget that. Reach for the highest grounds you can think of - without explaining yourself. thats all "aggression" you need to come out on top... in my opinion at least ;-)

Darren Eskandari
9 months ago

Cooperation. Even in competition, the whole endeavor is best advanced when ideas are shared.

Terri Hinton
8 months ago

Coopertition, meaning the integration of both. I find that cooperation tends to devolve into lowest common denominator mentality, while pure competition stifles integrating multiple points of view into higher synthesis. So the perfect middle place, designed well, lends itself to bringing out the best of both approaches.

Peter Baumann
8 months ago

Competition can occur on a wide spectrum. Competing for limited resources involves benefit for one at the cost to another while competition in the Olympic games is more along the line of: 'striving to bring the best out in each other'. Cooperation can also have upsides and downsides. Cooperating to build a home together is one end of the spectrum while cooperating to undermine the justice system is on the other. It's probably not a matter of competition vs. cooperation but a healthy balance between the two - intention is what matters most.

Michael Taft
8 months ago

I always notice cooperation at a traffic light. I'm dying to get through, everyone else is in a hurry. There is every urge to compete to push through the light, and yet if we all did that it would create such a snarl that none of us would get through. In a way sometimes, the best way to compete is to cooperate.

Darren Eskandari
8 months ago

"To me, the hallmark of civilization, and I believe this on its core foundational level, is the every-other-car merge at tunnels… when you get up to that, and it’s like four cars, and it goes down to one. And everybody suddenly, no matter what, Jew, Muslim, gay, straight, black, white, it doesn’t matter, everybody just goes, ‘I’m next,’ ‘No, you’re next,’ ‘Please,’ and it’s like the zipper merge, and it really says, to me, this is why we don’t drink the same water we shit in anymore, because we are a civilized society. That’s my theory." - Jon Stewart

Jeff Bellsey
8 months ago

We like to frame questions like this as either-ors. These are two of many options that constellate in a dance of possibilities. There is no one right answer, nor is there a single right "new" answer that synthesizes both, or mediates or compromises or elevates. Free market or regulation? Purpose or profit? Science or philosophy? Dualities are misleading! They're a trap ;)

Alexandra Souchkova
7 months ago

I see is as a constant balance of the two when opposites are instead viewed as compliments, and no particular strategy in keeping this balance but rather just recognizing the good in both.

Natasha Walker
8 months ago

I've changed over time. I could be said to be the perfect team player. I used to be focused on cooperation above all, but I've learned that incorporating some competition keeps people from stagnating. The desire to praised, prized, and deemed valuable can make us strive to be better. As my Jamaican mom used to say, "second place is first loser."

Clarence McKinney
8 months ago

Competition is the core principle in the evolution of biological organisms. While we may not like it personally, overall it has been the mainspring driving our many successes on this planet. At my place of work, I possess a strong desire to cooperate, because teamwork accomplishes more goals more effectively. Yet it's also clear to me that competition within the team and against other teams also helps us all to work harder. We may not always enjoy it, but I believe that we are better off due to competition.

Brooks Dunn
7 months ago

Compete to a point and then cooperate. For all of it's pretensions toward single authorship, architecture is a team sport. There will be some testing of ideas within the office at the beginning of a project. Everyone gets to put something on the wall. Once we've chosen a direction, competition within a project team is deadly.

Michael Harris
7 months ago

If you're in a sports team, what do you do with your teammates? Cooperate. What does your team do with regard to the other teams? Compete. That said, sporting competitions are fundamentally zero-sum, with winners and losers. Not all teams need to compete; some can cooperate, or at least collaborate. As Peter notes, competition is a multi-faceted concept, with at least 3 types that I can identify. First, competition for scarce resources is the most fundamental, but even that can be resolved with cooperation (you and I can share an apple rather than fight over it). Second, competition can be thought of as a choice of mechanism (or behaviour); the antonym is cooperation. Third, competition in economics is about market structure; the antonym is monopoly. But that's not what you had in mind, I think.

Adam Jones
7 months ago

I was going to basically add a similar notion as what Michael`s talking about. Of course cutthroat competition at every level is counterproductive, but competition overall can be extremely productive. Co-operate locally, compete globally?

Michael Harris
7 months ago

Gosh, that was some blather. In MY work life, I have found that cooperation, being a team player, and giving/sharing credit and praise has rarely if ever held me back or disadvantaged me. There can be contexts in which competition is an effective motivator, but I would prefer to set absolute standards and have people strive to meet them (including cooperatively), than utilise a relative ranking and have people strive to achieve a little bit more than the next person. YMMV.

Alice D'artagnan
7 months ago

Cooperating with the people who can get me what I want and competing with the people who have what I want.

Warren Kinston
7 months ago

Everyone is competing all the time. Everyone is cooperating all the time. So what does this question focus on? I think it implicitly focuses on ideologies—the bane of American politics and a WMD for rational thought. The other way the question might interfere with rational thought is by creating a duality. People think that things become clearer when they define opposites, but in my experience people define opposites when they are confused or blocked. Sociologists often feel like that. Might this apply here? If you want to cooperate, then you need to appreciate the factors involved. If you think about your group projects, you will recognize that cooperation is not as simple as just do it or don't! A practical model emerging from types of ethical choice is provided here: http://thee-online.com/Frameworks/Cooperation.aspx (I forgot to add that it is built on the existence of competition.)

 
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