Cooperation vs. Competition

 

In a time of accelerated and massive change, when conventional resources are quickly being depleted, cooperative effort is needed to navigate the “rapids of change.” 

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Cooperation, or co-operation is the practice of individuals or larger societal entities working in common with mutually agreed-upon goals and possibly methods, instead of working separately in competition, and in which the success of one is dependent and contingent upon the success of another.

However, co-operation may be coerced (forced) or voluntary (freely chosen), and consequently individuals and groups might co-operate even although they have almost nothing in common qua interests or goals. Examples of that can be found in market trade, military wars, families, workplaces, schools and prisons, and more generally any institution or organization of which individuals are part (out of own choice, by law, or forced).

Cooperation vs. competition

While cooperation is the antithesis of competition, the need or desire to compete with others is a common impetus that motivates individuals to organize into a group and cooperate with each other in order to form a stronger competitive force.

Cooperation in many areas such as farming and housing may be in the form of a cooperative or, alternately, in the form of a conventional business.

Many people support cooperation as the ideal form of management of human affairs. In terms of individuals obtaining goods and services, rather than resorting to theft or confiscation, they may cooperate by trading with each other or by altruistic sharing.

Certain forms of cooperation are illegal in some jurisdictions because they alter the nature of access by others to economic or other resources. Thus, cooperation in the form of cartels or price-fixing may be illegal.

A few mechanisms have been suggested for the appearance of cooperation between humans or in natural system.

The Prisoner's Dilemma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

Even if all members of a group would benefit if all cooperate, individual self-interest may not favor cooperation. The prisoner's dilemma codifies this problem and has been the subject of much research, both theoretical and experimental. Results from experimental economics show that humans often act more cooperatively than strict self-interest would seem to dictate.
One reason for this may be that if the prisoner's dilemma situation is repeated (the iterated prisoner's dilemma), it allows non-cooperation to be punished more, and cooperation to be rewarded more, than the single-shot version of the problem would suggest. It has been suggested that this is one reason for the evolution of complex emotional and social behavior in higher animals.

Another reason might be that humans are by nature socially co-operative beings, who, at least as infants, and usually thereafter, cannot survive without co-operating - although with maturation they gain much more choice about the kinds of co-operation they wish to have.

There are four main conditions that tend to be necessary for cooperative behavior to develop between two individuals:
• An overlap in desires
• A chance of future encounters with the same individual
• Memory of past encounters with that individual
• A value associated with future outcomes

 References
• The Evolution of Cooperation, Robert Axelrod, Basic Books, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Cooperation

 

• The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins (1990), second edition -- includes two chapters about the evolution of cooperation,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene

 

• The Seven Challenges: A Workbook and Reader About Communicating More Cooperatively, Dennis Rivers, fourth edition, 2005 -- treats cooperation as a set of skills that can be improved.http://www.newconversations.net/communication_skills_workbook_summary_and_toc.htm    

 

• Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert T. Boyd, Ernst Fehr (eds.), Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life (Economic Learning and Social Evolution). MIT 2005

 

• John McMurtry, "How Competition Goes Wrong." Journal of Applied Philosophy, 8(2): 200-210, 1991

External linksLook up cooperation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary   

 

• PDF The Cooperation Project: Objectives, Accomplishments, and Proposals [rheingold.com Howard Rheingold's project with Institute for the Future. http://www.iftf.org/http://www.rheingold.com/cooperation/CooperationProject_3_30_05.pdf

Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperation

Competitive and Cooperative Approaches to Conflict

Cooperative vs. Competitive Conflict Styles

When individuals or parties enter into a negotiation process to resolve conflict, they will bring a certain orientation to the table in their effort to settle the conflict. The two most basic orientations people adhere to when entering into negotiations are cooperative or competitive. A cooperative approach aligns with the process of interest-based or integrative bargaining, which leads parties to seek win-win solutions. Disputants that work cooperatively to negotiate a solution are more likely to develop a relationship of trust and come up with mutually beneficial options for settlement. The mutual gains approach is considered a constructive resolution process.

Options for a negotiated settlement are limited in some cases by a fixed pie (a set amount of rewards) that must be divided one way or the other. Such situations leave no alternative for mutual gains and therefore parties must utilize competitive negotiation tactics to pursue their goal(s). Competitive approaches align with the process of distributive bargaining, which result in win-lose outcomes. A competitive approach to conflict tends to increase animosity and distrust between parties and is generally considered destructive.

The Negotiator's Dilemma

At its core, negotiation involves a fundamental tension between whether parties feel they need to cooperate or compete in order to achieve their goals. It is important to remember though, that negotiating an acceptable agreement always includes common and conflicting goals. Therefore both cooperation and competition are necessary to some extent in order to reach resolution. In other words, "[n]egotiators must learn, in part from each other, what is jointly possible and desirable. To do so requires some degree of cooperation. But, at the same time, they seek to advance their individual interests. This involves some degree of competition."[1] Finding a balance between these two approaches is the key to successful negotiation. This basic tension between cooperation and competition in negotiation is known as, "The Negotiator's Dilemma."[2]

Goals, Interdependence, and Process

How a party approaches resolving a conflict depends on many factors. Scholars in the field of social psychology, particularly Morton Deutsch, have developed theories about factors that influence whether a person approaches a conflict cooperatively or competitively. The most important factors are the nature of the dispute and the goals each side seeks to achieve as a result of it. Deutsch's theory centers on the relationship between the two sides' goals, which he calls interdependence. According to his theory, the type of interdependence existing between negotiating parties will largely guide how they interact.

Deutsch identifies two basic types of goal interdependence -- positive and negative. Positive interdependence means that each side's goals are tied together in such a way that the chance of one side attaining its goal is increased by the probability of the other side successfully attaining its goal.[3] Positively interdependent goals normally result in cooperative situations because any participant can "attain his goal if, and only if, the others with whom he is linked can attain their goals."[4] On the other hand, negative interdependence means that each side's goals are tied together in such a way that the probability of one side attaining its goal is decreased by the probability of the other side successfully attaining its goal.[5] Negatively interdependent goals force competitive situations because the only way for one side to achieve its goals is for the other side not to.

Personality and Conflict Style

The approach or conflict style a negotiator chooses to take when entering negotiations may be based on rational criteria, such as selecting the style that will most likely lead to the desired goals. However, the personalities of the people involved may also play a significant role in which conflict styles are brought to the negotiating table. Thus, it is also possible that some people consistently use a certain style "because they have a personality predisposition to do so."[6]

Deutsch distinguishes between two key dimensions of personality: assertiveness in the pursuit of one's own goals, and cooperativeness in pursuit of mutual goals.[7] Researchers have identified five major conflict management styles based on a continuum from assertive (competitive) to cooperative:

• A competing style -- high on assertiveness and low on cooperativeness.
• An accommodating style -- low on assertiveness and high on cooperativeness.
• An avoiding style -- low on both assertiveness and cooperativeness.
• A collaborating style -- high on both assertiveness and cooperativeness.
• A compromising style -- moderate on both assertiveness and cooperativeness.[8]

Effects of Cooperative and Competitive Approaches

Morton Deutsch's theory of cooperation and competition includes predictions about what sort of interactions will occur between negotiating parties as a result of their disputing style.

Cooperative styles are characterized by:

1. "Effective communication" where ideas are verbalized, group members pay attention to one another and accept their ideas and are influenced by them. These groups have less problems communicating with and understanding others.
2. "Friendliness, helpfulness, and less obstructiveness" is expressed in conversations. Members tend to be generally more satisfied with the group and its solutions as well as being impressed by the contributions of other group members.
3. "Coordination of effort, division of labor, orientation to task achievement, orderliness in discussion, and high productivity" tend to exist in cooperative groups.
4. "Feeling of agreement with the ideas of others and a sense of basic similarity in beliefs and values, as well as confidence in one's own ideas and in the value that other members attach to those ideas, are obtained in cooperative groups."
5. "Willingness to enhance the other's power" to achieve the other's goals increases. As other's capabilities are strengthened in a cooperative relationship, you are strengthened and vice versa.
6. "Defining conflicting interests as a mutual problem to be solved by collaborative effort facilitates recognizing the legitimacy of each other's interests and the necessity to search for a solution responsive to the needs of all." This tends to limit the scope of conflicting interests and keep attempts to influence each other to decent forms of persuasion.[9]

A competitive process will most likely have the opposite effects on the parties:

1. Communication is obstructed as the conflicting parties try to gain advantage by misleading each other through false promises and misinformation. Communication is ultimately reduced as the parties realize they cannot trust one another's communications as honest and informative.
2. "Obstructiveness and lack of helpfulness lead to mutual negative attitudes and suspicion of one another's intentions. One's perceptions of the other tend to focus on the person's negative qualities and ignore the positives."
3. The parties are unable to effectively divide their work and end up duplicating efforts. When they do divide it, they continuously feel the need to check each other's work.
4. Ongoing disagreement and critical rejection of ideas reduces participants' self-confidence as well as confidence in the other parties.
5. The conflicting parties seek to increase their own power and therefore see any increase in the other side's power as a threat.
6. The competitive process fosters the notion that the solution of the conflict can only be imposed by one side on the other. This orientation also encourages the use of coercive tactics such as psychological or physical threats and/or violence. This process tends to expand the range of contested issues and turns the conflict into a power struggle, with each side seeking to win outright. This sort of escalation raises the motivational significance of the conflict for the participants and makes them more likely to accept a mutual disaster rather than a partial defeat or compromise. [10]

Despite the very negative picture painted by Deutsch, other theorists emphasize that competition, in some circumstances, can be constructive. Competition in sports, for example, encourages each side to strive for excellence. Although most sporting events are structured in a win-lose sort of way, good sportsmanship norms ensure that the games are played fairly, and in many instances, the loser gets to come back and play again on equal ground.

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[1] David Lax and James K. Sebenius, The Manager as Negotiator: Bargaining for Cooperation and Competitive Gain (New York: The Free Press, 1986), 29.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Morton Deutsch, "Cooperation and Competition," in The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice, eds. Morton Deutsch and Peter Coleman (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 200), 22.

[4] Morton Deutsch, The Resolution of Conflict: Constructive and Destructive Processes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), 20. This section of Deutsch's earlier work on constructive and destructive conflict resolution processes is closely paralleled by the later chapter in The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice, which offers a summarized version of his older work.

[5] Morton Deutsch, "Cooperation and Competition," in The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice, eds. Morton Deutsch and Peter Coleman (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000), 22.

[6] Roy J. Lewicki, David M. Saunders and John W. Minton, Negotiation, 3^rd Edition (San Francisco: Irwin McGraw-Hill, 1999), 358. The other ideas comprising this section were also drawn from this work, pp. 358-361.

[7] Ibid, 359.

[8] The following bullet points come from Roy J. Lewicki, David M. Saunders and John W. Minton, Negotiation, 3^rd Edition (San Francisco: Irwin McGraw-Hill, 1999), 359.

[9] The following bullet points were pulled and paraphrased from Morton Deutsch, "Cooperation and Competition," in The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice, eds. Morton Deutsch and Peter Coleman (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 200), 25.

[10] Ibid, 25-26.

Fikret Rushiti

"Competition Is Cooperation"

Much animosity toward capitalism among academic critics can be accounted for by a distaste for competition. The critics just don’t like it. It seems so rough, so uncaring, so vulgar, and laboring under the misapprehension that its opposite is cooperation, they endorse the latter in righteous tones while condemning competition as the “law of the jungle.”

On first sight, this is plausible. As most people think of it, competition has winners and losers; cooperation has only winners. Competition sounds cold and antagonistic. Cooperation sounds warm and nice. Children are exhorted to cooperate, not to compete.

But this way of thinking is full of fallacies. For human beings competition is not the negation of cooperation but a form of it. We know this because when competition is forcibly suppressed, cooperation breaks down and something like the real law of the jungle takes its place.

The idea that capitalist society lacks cooperation is ludicrous. “Society is concerted action, cooperation,” wrote Ludwig von Mises in Human Action.“[S]ociety is nothing but the combination of individuals for cooperative effort.” To imagine a society without widespread cooperation is to imagine a square circle. It can’t be done.

The marketplace, with its specialization and division of labor, is the epitome of cooperation. One person makes shoes; another makes clothes. Then they exchange their products. What could be more cooperative? Pre-industrial societies were less cooperative in the sense that the circles of trust were small. With modern capitalism, they extend to distant and perfect strangers. Indeed, cooperation is global—something that many critics of capitalism, oddly, do not like.

What is the relationship between competition and cooperation? Competition is what arises when people are free to choose with whom to cooperate. Sam wants shoes. Manny, Moe, and Jack sell shoes. Each wants to cooperate with Sam. So each strives to win his patronage by offering higher quality, lower prices, a better selection, or some combination of these. That the sellers expect to gain from the cooperation is no valid objection. Parties to cooperative efforts always expect to gain somehow.

Manny, Moe, and Jack could cooperate to sell shoes together, and under some circumstances they may do so. But capitalism’s critics would object to that also. Apparently only cooperation thought up by academics and forcibly imposed by politicians is appropriate.

Thus freedom plus cooperation equals competition. Those who would banish competition would also have to banish free cooperation. All that would be left would be forced cooperation, with the state dictating the terms. Compulsory cooperation is what went on in the gulag and concentration camp. In fact, there’s nothing cooperative about it at all. It’s just compulsion.

This is not to say that there is no downside to competition. If enough shoe buyers patronize Manny and Moe, Jack may go out of business. His dream of owning a shoe store may be dashed, and he might have to go to work for someone else or find some other occupation. We can sympathize with him, while realizing that to prevent such sad events the state would have to restrict the freedom of shoe buyers. Of course, the restrictions would go well beyond that. If the government is to prohibit competition throughout the economy, it must ultimately own and control all resources. But we know from writings of Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek that this is the path to disaster. Without private ownership and trade in the means of production—that is, competition—there can be no true money prices for resources. And without prices there can be no way to calculate the best strategies for satisfying consumers at the lowest cost.

Economic competition is often erroneously compared to what goes on among wild animals. The terms “dog eat dog” and “survival of the fittest” are thrown around with little consideration of what they mean. In the wilderness animals compete in consumption. Since they do not engage in production, they have to make do with what the environment grants. With demand usually exceeding supply, competition in consumption brings about the unpleasantness we associate with wild animals.

People Are Different

What goes on among people is far different. Human beings produce as well as consume. What’s more, we discovered early on that specialization, the division of labor, and trade make each individual far better off than he would be in isolation. While resources are always scarce at any moment, the productive process progressively reduces scarcity. Billions of people are wealthier today than one billion were around 1800.

In a modern market economy we don’t normally rush to the supermarket hoping to get there before all the milk is gone. We are confident that there will be milk and other goods on the shelves all the time. (This was not true in the Soviet economy.)

In other words, the competition that goes on in the marketplace is not, for the most part, competition in consumption, but rather competition in production. Or, to be more precise, we compete to consume by competing to produce. Instead of vying for a piece of meat before someone else gets it, we vie to produce better food or clothing or DVD players for others before someone else does. Success enables us then to purchase the goods we want. In contrast, when the state prohibits competition in production, competition in consumption is inevitable. Anti-capitalism ushers in the law of the jungle.

As Mises wrote and contrary to intuition, the cooperation of the marketplace abolishes the law of the jungle. If many animals need the same food, a bloody competition results. But the demand by all people for clothing, food, and shelter brings those products within easier reach of everyone, as specialization and the division of labor lower the cost of production and expand supply. The competition and cooperation in the marketplace are truly humane.

Mises takes this argument a step further. It has been suggested that fellow feeling among people led to economic cooperation and rising living standards. Mises says it worked the other way around. The realization that trade makes us better off encouraged economic cooperation. This in turn permitted the emergence of “feelings of sympathy and friendship.” Cause and effect could not have been reversed. If we were competitors in consumption, “Each man would have been forced to view all other men as his enemies; his craving for the satisfaction of his own appetites would have brought him into an implacable conflict with his neighbors. No sympathy could possibly develop under such a state of affairs.”

Thus in more ways than one, capitalism makes us all richer.

Fikret Rushiti

"Coopetition"

Coopetition or Co-opetition (sometimes spelled "coopertition" or "co-opertition") is a neologism coined to describe cooperative competition. Coopetition is a portmanteau of cooperation and competition, emphasizing the "petition"-like nature of the joint work.

Basic principles of co-opetitive structures have been described in game theory, a scientific field that received more attention with the book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior in 1944 and the works of John Forbes Nash on non-cooperative games. It is also applied in the fields of political science and economics and even universally (works of V. Frank Asaro, J.D.: Universal Co-opetition (2011), The Tortoise Shell Code, a novel (2012), and A Primal Wisdom, a non-fiction corollary to the novel (2014)).

Coopetition occurs at inter-organizational or intra-organizational levels.

At inter-organisational level, coopetition occurs when companies interact with partial congruence of interests. They cooperate with each other to reach a higher value creation if compared to the value created without interaction and struggle to achieve competitive advantage. Often coopetition takes place when companies that are in the same market work together in the exploration of knowledge and research of new products, at the same time that they compete for market-share of their products and in the exploitation of the knowledge created. In this case, the interactions occur simultaneously and in different levels in the value chain. This is the case of the arrangement between PSA Peugeot Citroën and Toyota to share components for a new city car—simultaneously sold as the Peugeot 107, the Toyota Aygo, and the Citroën C1, where companies save money on shared costs while remaining fiercely competitive in other areas. Several advantages can be foreseen, as cost reductions, resources complementarity and technological transfer. Some difficulties also exist, as distribution of control, equity in risk, complementary needs and trust. It is possible for more than two companies to be involved in coopetition with one another.

At intra-organizational level, coopetition occurs between individuals or functional units within the same organization. Based on game theory and social interdependence theories, some studies investigate the presence of simultaneous cooperation and competition among functional units, the antecedents of coopetition, and its impact on knowledge sharing behaviors. For example, the concept of coopetitive knowledge sharing is developed to explain mechanisms through which coopetition influences effective knowledge sharing practices in cross-functional teams. The underlying argument is that while organizational teams need to cooperate, they are likely to experience tension caused by diverse professional philosophies and competing goals from different cross-functional representatives.

History of the word

The word coopetition and its variants have been re-coined several times:

• In 1913 by the Sealshipt Oyster System
• In 1937 by Rockwell D. Hunt
• Around 1975 by Doug Chamberlin in a class at Adrian College, responding to an instructor's request for an appropriate new word with which to refer to "conflict over how to divide up the benefits produced by cooperation." Incorporated in 1981 college textbook Thinking About Politics: American Government in Associational Perspective (N.Y: D. Van Nostrand, 1981), chapter 9, p. 257. Text is available on-line [1].
• In the decade of the 1980s, V. Frank Asaro, J.D., wrote and circulated his 465 page non-fiction work, Primal Synthesis: A Balance Between Order and Chaos, which culminated in a letter from best-selling author Spencer Johnson, M.D., dated February 9, 1990, urging its publication. This resulted in the later publication of Universal Co-opetition; The Tortoise Shell Code, a novelization of co-opetition; and the non-fiction A Primal Wisdom (2014), corollary to the novel.
• Around 1992 by Raymond Noorda to characterize Novell's business strategy.
• In 1995, Daniel Ervin, CEO of Phoenix Fire Inc., which is an international business development agency that focuses on building business partner channels for technology companies, started using the word Coopertition to describe the approach of creating a partnership between two or more competing software vendors. This type of partnership enables vendors with nominal overlap in their solution portfolio to quickly gain more market share together than when they are operating apart.
• In 2000, FIRST Robotics had a competition game titled Co-Opertition FIRST. In 2009, FIRST cofounder Dean Kamen received a patent titled "Method for Creating Coopertition" (spelled as one word, with no hyphen), which involves giving FIRST Robotics teams some points scored by other teams, to encourage cooperation even as they compete. US FIRST now claims a trademark on the term on its Web site.
• In the mid-2000s, "coopetition" began to be used by Darrell Waltrip to describe the phenomenon of drivers cooperating at various phases of a race at "high speed" tracks such as Daytona and Talladaga where cooperative aerodynamic drafting is critical to a driver's ability to advance through the field. The ultimate goal for each driver, however, is to use the strategy to win.^[11]
• One of the examples of coopetition in practice in high technology context is the collaborative joint venture formed by Samsung Electronics and Sony formed in 2004 for the development and manufacturing of flat-screen LCD Panels. Coopetition is becoming more critical in high technology contexts because of several challenges such as shrinking product life cycles, need for heavy investments in research and development, convergence of multiple technologies, and importance of technological standards. While it is quite challenging to engage in coopetition (or cooperate with a competitor), coopetition engagements are helpful for firms to address major technological challenges, to create benefits for partnering firms, and to advance technological innovations that benefit the firms, the industry, and consumers.
• In 2009, the importance of coopetition was emphasized for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs). As technological battles intensify and technologies become more complex, SMEs face numerous challenges such as rising R&D costs, high risk and uncertainty in technological development, and lack of resources to pursue large-scale innovation projects.^[13] SMEs can more effectively deal with these problems if they work together by combining their own resources and expertise and develop their collective ability so that they can compete effectively with large firms and advance technologies they may not be able to advance alone.
• In 2012 and 2013, the concept of 'Coopetitive Knowledge Sharing' was inspired by inter-organization research literature toward developing a Coopetitive Model of Knowledge Sharing that explains 
• (1) how coopetition should be conceptualized,
•  (2) What forms coopetition (three formative constructs of outcome (goal, reward), means (task related), boundary (friendship, geographical closeness, sense of team belonging) interdependencies), and 
• (3) How coopetition and its interrelated components interact and influence knowledge sharing behaviors in cross-functional software teams. This series of publications in the Journal of Systems and Software and Information Processing & Management conceptualize and operationalize the multi-dimensional construct of cross-functional coopetition and presents an instrument for measuring this construct. Cross-functional coopetition is conceptualized with five distinct and independent constructs, three of them are related to cross-functional cooperation (task orientation, communication, interpersonal relationships), and two are associated with cross-functional competition (tangible resources and intangible resources).
• In 2013 Compassion Games International, an activity of the Charter for Compassion, used "coopetition" to describe their annual games between cities about who can commit the most acts of kindness and compassion.
• In 2014 the Caring Citizens' Congress, an Empathy Surplus Project, used "coopetition" to describe how to create "compassion primaries," where candidates for party office try and find allies in the other parties to cooperate around advancing freedom, compassion and human rights as governing principles.

Fikret Rushiti

Competition vs. Cooperation

ArgumentIn the debate over what type of society is best, conservatives generally favor more competitive societies, whereas liberals favor more cooperative ones. Let's attempt to see which side is correct, by reviewing the fundamentals of competition and cooperation:

The origins of competitionPerhaps the first thing to note is that all life is ultimately competitive. For many centuries, biologists have known that the natural tendency of the animal population is to explode, but the limited food supply keeps it in check. (There are also other limiting factors, like space, climate, resources, etc.) Because there are more creatures than food, this means that some will starve to death. Thus, in order to survive, animals must compete for food, killing each other if need be. (1)

The above observation is one of the most firmly proven facts of modern biology. It's implications, however, have been deeply controversial. The 18^th century economist Thomas Malthus argued that giving more food to the poor was self-defeating, since it would only expand their population and create more of the same hunger and misery that welfare was designed to alleviate. Malthus therefore argued that welfare programs should be halted. Malthus' proposal sparked a bitter political debate -- the poor charged that he was heartless, while the rich congratulated him for applying science to the issue of welfare. Interestingly, the controversy itself was indicative of the class warfare that rages for society's limited resources.

Likewise, Charles Darwin found the concept of deadly competition important for developing his theories of natural selection and survival of the fittest. Darwin theorized that if animals must compete to survive, then the winners would be those with the strongest traits, which would then be passed on to their offspring. Meanwhile, those with weaker traits would be killed before they could breed, and would be dropped from the gene pool. It is important to note that even if you don't believe in evolution, natural selection indisputably occurs in all other competitive systems. These range from individual firms competing on the free market to individual workers competing for job promotions. Indeed, the fact that natural selection occurs everywhere else is a strong argument that it occurs in biology as well.

Natural selection has developed in humans a natural desire to compete. Those with non-competitive natures would have lost their struggle for survival, and disappeared from the gene pool a long time ago. On the other hand, those with an overly intense desire to compete would have become dead heroes, and likewise failed to pass on their traits. Thus, a reasonable attraction to competition is both healthy and natural.

The competitiveness of humanity has worked itself even into our most basic definitions of the social sciences. Economics is formally defined as the study of "the efficient allocation of scarce resources among competing uses." (2) Politics is defined as the "relations between special interest groups competing for limited resources." (3) War is a violent competition for resources -- especially land -- hence Karl von Clausewitz' famous remark that "War is nothing more than the continuation of politics by other means." Because competitions are won by those with the most power, political science is defined as "An academic discipline which studies power and the distribution of power in different types of political systems." (4) Even though these different fields have taken different routes to reach the same conclusion, the idea that humans compete for limited resources is one that elegantly and coherently unites the social sciences.

The origins of cooperationBut imagine what it would be like to live in a society where each individual competes against everyone else, without any cooperation at all. You wouldn't dare walk outside, for your neighbor could shoot you and take all your property. Nor could you rely on the police to protect you, since law enforcement is a form of social cooperation. In a perfectly competitive world, only the strongest or luckiest would survive.

But what if you were fortunate enough to be one of the strongest or luckiest? After killing off most of society, you would only find yourself among survivors who were highly competent killers themselves, and the terror would start anew. And even if you emerged the final victor, the rewards would be slight… how rich and satisfied can you be when you're a hermit?

All species avoid this bleak scenario through cooperation. Among humans, cooperation can be divided into two categories: friendly and hostile. An example of friendly cooperation is the alliances you join to compete more efficiently against other individuals or groups. A good example is the business firm, where employees take specialized, interdependent jobs and work together to compete on the free market. The result is higher quality products and greater work efficiency than if they competed alone.

Hostile cooperation, on the other hand, is what exists between competitors. This may seem paradoxical, yet there is a good reason why competitors often cooperate with each other: the rewards are greater. For example, if everyone fights for a piece of the pie, then the fight may become so costly that the pie will be nearly gone when it comes time to divide it. It's much better to forget the fight and come to an agreement from the very beginning. An example of hostile cooperation is family members who are contesting a million-dollar will. If they fight for the money too hard, then no one will get any, because it will all go to their lawyers' fees. Hence, it's in their interest to strike a deal.

As with competition, a moderated desire to cooperate is natural and healthy. Those with non-cooperative natures would have very low survival rates, as would those who cooperated so much that they did not look out after their own self-interests in a competitive world. It is for this reason that people take a healthy enjoyment in belonging to a group, practicing teamwork, helping others, etc.

The interplay between competition and cooperationNature has divided all life into natural alliances that compete for survival: namely, species. Members of the same species generally do not kill each other in their fight for limited resources, but instead work together to kill members of other species.

However, cooperation within species is not as perfect as it would seem. Even in normal times, there is subdued competition within the group, as members vie for positions of power and status. One famous example is primates, who divide themselves into alpha apes, beta apes, etc. It is interesting to note that among primates, male status is acquired through conflict. Among females, however, the opposite occurs: conflicts are resolved by the female's status. Hierarchies are found in countless species, but they are especially extreme in humans.

Competition within the group becomes more severe as resources become scarcer. When the situation becomes desperate enough, members of the same species are perfectly capable of turning on each other and killing each other. Just one example is the preying mantis, a specie which solves the problem of scarcity by allowing the female to eat the male after mating. Another is the chimpanzee, the closest human relative. From her long-term studies in Africa, Jane Goodall has reported that chimps sometimes divide into tribes, whereupon the larger kills the smaller.

Humans are no different. War is an obvious example of deadly competition within the human species, but most people don't realize that the same continues even during times of "peace." In our competitive economy, those who lack the skills, education, talent or opportunity to compete well become poor. And the poor suffer from death rates that are at least six times higher than the rich. (5) This higher death rate is due to a lack of resources: namely, health care, nutritious food, toxic-free environments, winter heating, information and education, and countless other means and devices that would protect and prolong their lives.

Here, critics may object that the above observation is based on a faulty assumption. We do not live in a zero-sum economy (where someone's gain is necessarily someone else's loss). We actually live in a (slightly) positive-sum economy, where the standard of living is rising for everyone. This is certainly true, but our standard of living grows extremely slowly -- whereas the population pressing against it tries to grow much faster. Therefore it's still quite possible for a positive-sum economy to experience deadly competition for limited resources. To understand this even more clearly, let's look at the larger picture:

Carrying capacity is what biologists call the limited ability of the land to sustain a population. This includes the amount of available food, water, resources and space, as well as the hospitality of the climate, the presence of other predators, etc. Needless to say, the greater the land's carrying capacity, the greater the population it can sustain.

Throughout most of human history, the carrying capacity of the land has been quite low, with humans increasing it only slowly and painfully. They accomplished this by inventing new forms of productive technology, like the plow, the mill, the granary, etc. But growth in productivity was far too slow to accommodate all the humans born into the world. The result was frequent starvation, famine and deadly competition for resources. To resolve this, many societies frequently practised birth control, ranging from abortion to infanticide.

But with the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the 18^th century, the land's carrying capacity soared. Through better science and technology, humans have learned how to tap the earth's resources at an ever growing rate. The result has been a population explosion. It took from the dawn of humanity until the year 1800 for the earth's population to reach 1 billion. But by 1960 it had already reached 3 billion, and by 1998 it will reach 6 billion.

This trend has two ominous implications. First, dramatically increasing the land's carrying capacity may have raised the individual's standard of living, but it has also increased the number of individuals competing for these new resources. Therefore, deadly competition remains a problem. 

Second, the earth's resources are ultimately limited, and it is absolutely inevitable that our carrying capacity will one day stop growing, and even shrink. What will happen then? Biologists already know the answer, from their historical observations of species that are hit by shrinking resources. The result will be a sickening plunge in the population, as famine, disease, war and other deadly competition take their toll.

As long as birth control keeps the population below the land's carrying capacity, or humans can somehow increase carrying capacity forever, then deadly competition is greatly reduced. People can live their entire lives without resorting to war, murder, or even subjecting the poor to mortal deprivations. Unfortunately, once the population starts pressing against the land's limited resources again, deadly competition resumes.

The solution that leftists propose is the creation of a sustainable economy. This would involve holding the population constant through birth control, and using resources no faster than they could be replaced. We would then use our abundance and technology to allow everyone a good standard of living. There would be no need to compete for survival, and no need to kill anyone to survive. This would tilt the balance towards cooperation, not competition.

Critics charge that humans are naturally competitive animals -- after all, they evolved that way. To create a perfectly cooperative society, they charge, is both impossible and utopian. This is certainly true, but fortunately, there is a way around it. Competition for survival is only one of the many thousands of ways that humans compete. Humans also fulfill their desire to compete through games, sports, contests, social status, career status, academic status, even mating. Eliminating the need to compete for survival would hardly eliminate the countless other ways that humans compete. Competition could still be used to improve society, even a sustainable one.

The "state of nature"Many political philosophers -- chief among them John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau -- have attempted to describe what humans were like in their original "state of nature." These accounts supposedly describe humans in prehistoric times, before the rise of modern society. Most important was their attempt to explain the rise of human competition and cooperation. These philosophers felt that understanding the "state of nature" would tell us how to run a more enlightened society.

Most of these accounts were scientifically false (which ought to be obvious even to the non-scientist, since these accounts completely disagree with each other). Nonetheless, they continue to be highly regarded by many modern political philosophers. Here is how the "Big Three" described the "state of nature:"

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679): Hobbes correctly identified that humans were locked in a deadly competition for limited resources. But he misdescribed the "state of nature" as an anarchic, chaotic, individualistic world where people were engaged in a "war of everyone against everyone." Thus, Hobbes believed life in the state of nature was "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short." To resolve this, humans agreed to cooperate for survival, by agreeing to surrender some of their freedom in return for peace and stability. They did this by creating a social contract -- that is, a large group agreement to cooperate and abide by the laws of the government. However, Hobbes believed that this government should take the form of a monarchy, not a democracy.

The problem with Hobbes' account, beyond the obvious one, is that humans have never lived in a chaotic, anarchic "war of everyone against everyone." Group behavior predates the rise of humans -- it exists in nearly all species everywhere. This includes the practice of hierarchy within the group as well. Even in the earliest human primates, paleontologists have found evidence of interdependent, cooperative group behavior. Modern society is merely an evolved form of this behavior.

John Locke (1632-1704): By contrast, Locke's "state of nature" was an idyllic world of freedom, equality and consideration of other people's rights. He wrote that the "state of nature" is governed by a "law of nature," which humans can discover through reason. Through his own reasoning, Locke concluded that humans were "by nature free, equal and independent." Furthermore, natural law obligated that "no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions."

Locke's writings are beset with numerous contradictions and difficulties. One of these is his view of the social contract. On one hand, he presents the social contract as an improvement over the state of nature. However, it is not clear why individuals would want to leave such an idyllic state of nature in the first place. Locke does admit that the state of nature can easily degenerate into a state of war, which some philosophers claim was Locke's justification for the social contract. However, this would still contradict Locke's claim that the state of nature was idyllic.

As an ideal, Locke's state of nature is certainly laudable, but as a description of prehistoric humans, it is flat wrong. All life is a deadly competition for limited resources, which means that humans must violate Locke's proposed "natural rights" of life, liberty and property just to survive. And even within cooperative groups, the natural feature is hierarchy, not equality. It certainly might be possible to engineer societies that increase cooperation and equality, but such perfect ideals are not to be found in nature.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778): The writings of this French philosopher were meant as a rebuttal to Hobbes and Locke, but Rousseau's arguments were no more scientifically accurate. Rousseau argued that humans who lived in the "state of nature" were solitary and non-competitive. They had no need or desire to compete because their population was small, which made the earth's resources relatively plentiful. Indeed, Rousseau would argue that human competition, inequality and misery only increased as the population and modern society grew. He thus evoked the image of the "noble savage," the individual who lives alone in the wild and is more dignified and content than his socialized relatives. Rousseau thus admitted that there was no reason for humans to flee the state of nature for the social contract. Instead, modern society developed naturally, without anyone purposely creating it to fulfill a conscious need. To Rousseau, modern society did have some good points, but they were offset by as many bad ones.

Again, there is little in Rousseau's writing that would withstand the scrutiny of modern scientists. Early humans were less numerous because their survival technology was primitive, and their death rate was phenomenally high. For hundreds of thousands of years, humans were no more than wandering nomads and hunters and gathers. It was only 10,000 years ago that human technology reached the point where they could settle in one place and begin the Agricultural Revolution. It was this event that solved ancient problems of scarcity and allowed the human population to start building to its current explosion.

Rousseau's "noble savage" is also pure fiction. Sociologists know of several documented cases of feral children (or children raised in complete isolation), and all behaved more like wild animals than humans. They could not speak, reacted to humans with fear and hostility, walked hunched or on all fours, tore into their food like wild animals, were apathetic to their surroundings, and were unable to keep even the lowest standards of personal hygiene. (6) This is a remarkable indication of how much the nobility of humans derives from society, not the inherent traits of individuals. 

Despite these inaccuracies, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau have had a major influence on centuries of political philosophers, including the U.S. Founding Fathers. Many people continue to appeal to them as authorities, and view their teachings as particularly enlightened. But if they reached some correct conclusions (like the call for democracy), it was not because these conclusions flowed logically from their mistaken premises. Given their serious flaws, one should approach their work critically.


Fikret Rushiti

Theory of Cooperation and Competition

Interpersonal bargaining is one of the many activities we usually engage in without even realizing it. The Moran Deutsch and Robert Krauss Experiment investigated two central factors in bargaining, namely how we communicate with each other and the use of threats.

This social psychology experiment has been widely recognized by experts for being successful in devising an explanation on why people oftentimes fail to effectively bargain with one another.

The following experiment investigates the two major factors that determine the success of interpersonal bargaining: threat and communication.

To resolve conflict, there are two basic orientations that people adhere to when engaging in negotiations: cooperative or competitive. These two conflict styles differ in such a way that in one style, both parties seem to get the advantage while the other one results to a win-lose outcome.

In every conflict, to be able to arrive into a certain resolution, both cooperation and competition are necessary. Morgan Deutsch and Robert Krauss investigated the use of threats and how people communicate when it comes to interpersonal bargaining.

First Experiment: Methodology

In the first experiment, the participant is asked to play a game against another participant where both will be running a truck company. The goal of the game is just like that of a real trucking company, that is, to make as much money as they can.

The participant’s trucking company will be aiming to deliver as many goods as possible to a particular destination as quick as it can. In the game, the player will only have a single starting point, a single destination and a single opponent.

The following map shows how one truck has to travel across to its destination:

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Theory of Cooperation and Competition

Interpersonal bargaining is one of the many activities we usually engage in without even realizing it. The Moran Deutsch and Robert Krauss Experiment investigated two central factors in bargaining, namely how we communicate with each other and the use of threats.

This social psychology experiment has been widely recognized by experts for being successful in devising an explanation on why people oftentimes fail to effectively bargain with one another.

The following experiment investigates the two major factors that determine the success of interpersonal bargaining: threat and communication.

To resolve conflict, there are two basic orientations that people adhere to when engaging in negotiations: cooperative or competitive. These two conflict styles differ in such a way that in one style, both parties seem to get the advantage while the other one results to a win-lose outcome.

In every conflict, to be able to arrive into a certain resolution, both cooperation and competition are necessary. Morgan Deutsch and Robert Krauss investigated the use of threats and how people communicate when it comes to interpersonal bargaining.

First Experiment: Methodology

In the first experiment, the participant is asked to play a game against another participant where both will be running a truck company. The goal of the game is just like that of a real trucking company, that is, to make as much money as they can.

The participant’s trucking company will be aiming to deliver as many goods as possible to a particular destination as quick as it can. In the game, the player will only have a single starting point, a single destination and a single opponent.

The following map shows how one truck has to travel across to its destination:

Map shown to Participants of Deutsch and Krauss Interpersonal Bargaining-Experiment

Both participants are presented to an identical problem. Both have two routes they can take from the start to the destination - the short and the long way. The short route, which is the quickest way to get to the destination, is one-way. Only one of the participants can travel down it at a time. This is where interpersonal bargaining comes in.

There will be no communication between the two contenders during the experiment and will both be seated in a cubicle from where one will only be able to see the control box for both his own truck and the experimenter.

As you can see, there is a gate at each opponent’s own end of the one-way road. This will serve as the contenders’ method of communication with each other. Each of them will be able to control their own gate, which can only be closed when their own truck is on the main route. This serves as the threat. It is reinforced by the experimenter that you are out to make as much money as you can for yourself and your opponent’s profit is out of the question.

Results

In this experiment, each contender is expected to make no profit at all, if not a major loss. In the first set of trials, both contenders will likely shut their gates forcing both trucks onto the longer route which is 50% longer, causing you a great loss on the trip as a whole.

On the next set of trials, your trucks may meet head-on traveling up the one-way road, giving them both the need to reverse, again costing you time and money. Towards the end, none will be able to make profit.

Second Experiment: Methodology

To further test the effect of communication in interpersonal bargaining, Deutsch and Krauss introduced the use of headphones in the game. Everything else was the same, just this time participants will be able to talk to each other with the use of headphones.

Results

Even with headphones, the result was not significantly any different to the results of the first experiment when there was no means of direct communication between the two. Even with communication, it did not really help the two manage having a better understanding of each other.

Apparently, people’s competitive orientation was stronger than their motivation to communicate.

According to the subjects, it was difficult to actually communicate to the other person to think both are strangers to each other.

Third Experiment: Forced Communication

This time, Deutsch and Krauss decided to test the effect of forced communication. Everything again remained the same, just that this time the participants were instructed that they have to say something to the other. In the event they do not talk to each other, the experimenter shall remind them to do so, regardless what their talk will be about as long as they do say something at least.

Results

This time, there was a positive outcome and there was some success shown for communication. Performance in the one-gate condition came close to that achieved in the no-threat condition.

Forced communication did not have that much of an effect on the no-threat condition compared to that of having none, and at the same time it did not improve the bilateral threat condition that much.

It appears that people are so competitive when they both feel threatened that it’s difficult to avoid both sides from being on the losing end.

Limitations of the Experiment

The experiment covers a situation in which interpersonal bargaining is carried out under time pressure. It also follows that the longer the subjects take to arrive to a certain resolution, the less money they make. In real life, time constriction isn’t always present.

Another thing is that, the setting has a relatively simple solution compared to how things really are in real life. In the experiment, participants need to make the most profit if they do share the one-way road. In real life, solutions are rarely clear-cut.

Conclusion

Here are some of Deutsch and Krauss’ findings in their study:

• People’s competitiveness tends to overcome effective communication between both parties since both parties do not want to be on the losing end.
• The cooperative style of negotiation is characterized by:
  • “Effective Communication” where ideas are verbalized, group members pay attention to one another and at the same time accept their ideas and are then influenced by them. These groups tend to have less problems communicating with and understanding others.
  • “Friendliness, helpfulness, and less obstructiveness” is expressed in conversations. Members tend to be generally more satisfied with the group and its solutions as well as being impressed by the contributions of other group members.
  • “Coordination of effort, division of labor, orientation to task achievement, orderliness in discussion, and high productivity” tend to exist in cooperative groups.
  • “Feeling of agreement with the ideas of others and a sense of basic similarity in beliefs and values, as well as confidence in one’s own ideas and in the value that other members attach to those ideas, are obtained in cooperative groups.”
  • “Willingness to enhance the other’s power” to achieve the other’s goals and increases. As other’s capabilities are strengthened in a cooperative relationship, you are strengthened and vice versa.
  • “Defining conflicting interests as a mutual problem to be solved by collaborative effort facilitates recognizing the legitimacy of each other’s interests and the necessity to search for a solution responsive to the needs of all.” This tends to limit the scope of conflicting interests and keep attempts to influence each other to decent forms of persuasion.
• The competitive style of negotiation on the other hand is characterized by:
  • Communication obstruction for conflicting parties try to gain advantage by misleading each other through false promises and misinformation. Communication is ultimately reduced as the parties realize they cannot trust the other.
  • “Obstructiveness and lack of helpfulness lead to mutual negative attitudes and suspicion of one another’s intentions. One’s perceptions of the other tend to focus on the person’s negative qualities and ignore the positives.”
  • The parties are unable to effectively divide their work and end up duplicating efforts. When they do divide it, they continuously feel the need to check each other’s work.
  • Ongoing disagreement and critical rejection of ideas reduces participants’ self-confidence as well as confidence in the other parties.
  • The conflicting parties seek to increase their own power and therefore see any increase in the other side’s power as a threat.
  • The competitive process fosters the notion that the solution of the conflict can only be imposed by one side on the other. This orientation also encourages the use of coercive tactics such as psychological or physical threats and/or violence. This process tends to expand the range of contested issues and turns the conflict into a power struggle, with each side seeking to win outright. This sort of escalation raises the motivational significance of the conflict for the participants and makes them more likely to accept a mutual disaster rather than a partial defeat or compromise.

Cited from: beyondintractability.org, a paraphrased version of excerpts from Morton Deutsch's "Cooperation and Competition," in The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice, eds. Morton Deutsch and Peter Coleman (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000)


Fikret Rushiti