No Contest

Contrary to what you may think, your company will be a lot more productive if you refuse to tolerate competition among your employees

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You've probably met the sort of chief executive officer who does an uncanny impersonation of Vince Lombardi: "Winning isn't everything -- it's the only thing." The more competition there is among his staff, he figures, the better for his company.

It's different in your office. You've heard about team building and Theory Z, and you don't go out of your way to promote rivalry. Of course, some of your managers do vie with one another -- for bonuses, perhaps, or power, or your approval. And your sales-people certainly aren't strangers to the race to be number one. But no harm in that, right? Isn't competition a productive force if used in moderation?

I've been studying the subject for the past five years, weighing the research from many different fields to assess the effects of competition. My conclusion is that optimal productivity not only doesn't require competition; it appears to require its absence. The ideal amount of competition in your company is none at all. Your best bet is to discourage any informal competition that may develop, and to go out of your way to design cooperative work groups and incentive systems.

Notice that I'm not just warning against excessive or inappropriate competition. I'm saying competition itself -- which simply means requiring one person or group to fail in order that another can succeed -- is inherently counterproductive. Similarly, I'm not offering a "soft" argument against competition, basing my objection solely on its destructiveness to us as human beings. I'm saying that competition also makes no sense from the perspective of the bottom line. It holds people back from doing their best.

Dean Tjosvold, a professor of business administration at Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia, has been turning out one study after another comparing cooperation with competition. "Cooperation makes a work force motivated and entrepreneurial," he concludes, whereas "serious competition undermines coordination."

In one of those studies, completed last spring, 47 managers at a company that distributes and maintains heavy equipment filled out detailed questionnaires. They indicated the extent to which their workplace promoted cooperation or competition, and also how effective they believed their subordinates to be. Meanwhile, 143 of these subordinates were assessing the styles of the managers. When the results were tallied, it turned out that the effectiveness of supervisors and subordinates alike went hand in hand with a cooperative orientation. Effectiveness was also shown to be negatively related to competitiveness.

In another study, this one of managers at an engineering-consulting firm and employees of a utility company, Tjosvold asked for descriptions of significant corporate events -- one success story and one tale of woe. He found a strong correlation between experiences of effectiveness and a perception of cooperation. Likewise, he found "competitive goals were related to ineffective interaction, negative feelings, little progress, and weakened relationships."

One reason that cooperation is associated with better performance is that employees enjoy this arrangement more. When Tjosvold and his colleagues interviewed 310 medical laboratory technicians from 10 different hospitals, once again the results were straightforward. Technicians were satisfied with their jobs and inspired to work hard if their supervisors were judged to value cooperation in the workplace. Those who worked in a competitive atmosphere were dissatisfied and, in many cases, thinking about quitting.

The father of this kind of research is sociologist Peter M. Blau, whose classic 1954 study compared two groups of interviewers at a public employment agency. Those in the first group competed fiercely to fill job openings. In the second, interviewers worked cooperatively, making sure to tell one another whenever a new position opened up. And it was the latter group that filled significantly more jobs.

Blau's thoughts on why this happened are worth noting. In the competitive environment, each agent hoarded job notifications rather than posting them so his or her colleagues could see them. This practice eventually was used defensively and thus became self-perpetuating. The members of the cooperative group, on the other hand, freely exchanged their resources and skills. What's more, they didn't have to worry about the hostility and distrust that competition can breed. "Social cohesion" means better results, Blau concluded.

Then there is the matter of anxiety. Blau and other researchers have found that the pressure produced by having to defeat others -- and risk being defeated -- can interfere significantly with performance. It is true that a small amount of anxiety may be stimulating, but the stress of competition typically has the opposite effect.

One study of college students, conducted by W. J. McKeachie and the late Donald Bruce Haines, found that those who were in competitive discussion groups -- informed that their grade would depend on how their answers compared with others' -- "became more anxious . . . and found themselves losing self-assurance." These students weren't able to cover as many questions as their counterparts, whose grades reflected how well the whole group did.

Such research supports the anecdotal evidence I've gathered while traveling around the country to talk about competition. A salesman in California told me his colleagues were "dropping like flies" when they had to best each other's sales records. As soon as the system was changed to a noncompetitive quota, satisfaction shot up -- and so did sales. An artist in Illinois observed that when he thinks about competing for exhibitions or prizes, he "get[s] all tight" and is unable to paint well. (Indeed, a 1982 study by Brandeis University psychologist Teresa M. Amabile showed that children who competed against one another produced much less creative colleges than those who didn't have to compete.) A Washington, D.C., restaurateur reported that after he eliminated all competition among his employees, he had never seen a group of happier or more productive workers.

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