Most of the information in this paper and the way it is structured was extracted from the book: No Contest: The Case Against Competition, by Alfie Kohn, published by Houghton Mifflin Company, copyright 1986. Detailed refences of the studies mentioned in this paper can be found in Kohn's book.

This paper in the form of a presentation was given to IBM audiences in February and March of 1992. With the blessing of Kohn's agent, it was put on audiotape and made available for free within IBM. Audiotapes were requested from and sent to IBMers in twenty states, in eight countries, on four continents. The IBM perspective remains in this paper. John Akers, who was CEO at the time this presentation was developed (and who is skewerd in it) "led" IBM into its darkest days (the accurate public perception was that IBM was a floundering company; its stock was selling at a little over $40 a share). Lou Gerstner, current IBM CEO is less "beat the other guy" and more "serve the Customer" oriented than Akers. IBM is again a proud company and its stock, even after a split, was recently selling at $180 a share.

Introduction

This quote has become the rallying cry for our competitive society.

What is not widely known is that Lombardi regretted ever having made that statement. He said about it: 

"I wish to hell I'd never said the damned thing. I meant having a goal.... I sure as hell didn't mean for people to crush human values and morality.

Some people may be afraid of a challenge to the value of competition. Whether or not they are comfortable with or believe in competition, it is what they are familiar with and a challenge to the known often raises a fear of the unknown.

Some people, what I've found to be a surprising number, find joy in a challenge to the value of competition. They may have been uncomfortable with competition but, because of societal pressures, considered themselves abnormal for not accepting and valuing competition.

What I would like you to do as you read this paper, is to honor whatever it is you are feeling by noting it, perhaps writing it down, but to try to put aside fully exploring those feelings until you have read all of this paper. I would like for you to strive for objectivity in receiving this information, and I will strive to be thorough in what I present so that you may be best able to use this information for inspiration and self-reflection. 

Presentation Objectives

• Competition is unnecessary

It is not human nature and not a necessary part of social structure.
 
• Competition is unhealthy

It is unhealthy for us individually and collectively. 

• Take action to reduce competition in our lives and the lives of others
• Educate others about the above.

1. Define "competition". Many of our attitudes about competition flow from misconceptions about its meaning.
2. Examine the arguments for competition and describe why each of them is to be rejected 
3. Present some ideas as to how we may reduce competition in our lives.

Definition of Competition

What competition is

• Structural Competition - Mutually exclusive goal attainment situation. In such a situation, my success requires your failure. Our fates are negatively linked.
• Intentional Competition - An attitude; a desire to best others.

What competition is not

• Trying to improve yourself

Competition is fundamentally an interactive word. You cannot do it to yourself. The notion of "competing with one's self" is an ill-formed notion.
 

• A Necessary aspect of comparing

We can compare hobbies. I can compare the way I write with the way Shakespeare wrote. We compare with a view to getting something done it doesn't require that we best someone.
 

• Synonymous with "success"

We do not have to beat someone in order to succeed. Similarly, we do not have to be beaten by someone in order to fail to achieve our goals.
 

• Necessarily present when there is conflict

High performing teams uncover then work through conflict without anyone having to feel that they lost.

I believe the case against competition is so compelling that parenthetical qualifications to the effect that competing can sometimes be constructive would be incongruous and unwarranted. 

-- Alfie Kohn

Case for Competition

1. Competition i unavoidable (it is human nature)
2. Competition is more productive than other forms of social interactions
3. Competition is more enjoyable than other forms of social interactions
4. Competition builds character and self-confidence.

• Successful
• Psychologically healthy
• Conducive to liking one another.

Myth #1: Competition is Human Nature 

What is most interesting about this position is that no case has been made for it. The claim rests on appeal alone.

The opposing position, that it is not human nature to compete, has several arguments to support it.

1. The vast majority of human interaction is not competitive but cooperative. Cooperation is inherent in the idea of a society.

 
2. The tendency to cooperate has been found among toddlers and infants suggesting that if we are genetically competitive we are also genetically cooperative.

 
3. Natural selection does not require competition and in fact it discourages it. To be fair, since humans overlay our physiology with the powerful influence of culture, strictly looking at natural selection is inadequate. However, it is suggestive. Consider what the following zoologists have said about natural selection:

 

The equation of competition with success in natural selection is merely a cultural prejudice. 
-- Stephen Jay Gould

Struggle is sometimes involved, but usually it is not, and when it is, it may even work against rather than toward natural selection.
-- George Gaylord Simpson

This competition, this 'struggle', is a superficial thing, superimposed on an essential mutual dependence. 
-- Marvin Bates

We tend to project our view of competition into the rest of the natural world. We tend to misuse the word and describe as "competition" the phenomena of one species displacing another in a particular environment when the former species is or becomes better adapted to changes in that environment. It doesn't occur to us that animals tend to live in cooperative groups despite the much greater risk of spreading infections and the much greater demand on resources. 

Petr Kropotkin, in his book Mutual Aid, wrote:
 

competition...is limited among animals to exceptional periods....Better conditions are created by the elimination of competition by means of mutual aid and mutual support... "Don't compete!--competition is always injurious to the species, and you have plenty of resources to avoid it!" That is the tendency of nature, not always realized in full, but always present. That is the watchword which comes to us from the bush, the forest, the river, the ocean. "Therefore combine-- practice mutual aid!..." That is what Nature teaches us. 

4. (The fourth argument that it is not human nature to compete...) We are competitive, not because we were born that way, but because we learned it. That is the conclusion of the great majority of theorists and researchers. We've learned competition:
• Through school where cooperative effort is equated with cheating and we use the word "cooperation" to mean "obedience". "You're not being very cooperative!"  Schools enforce these structures and meanings even though when given a choice; students of all grades choose cooperative games over competitive ones and grading for cooperative effort.
• In the nuclear family. We make our children compete for our attention and our love as we had to compete for that of our parents. "Who's daddy's best little girl?" We get in win/lose struggles with our children who are trying to find and understand limits. We often know better than they what is best for them, and we often convey it in a dictatorial fashion. We get our way--we win--the child perceives it as a loss.
Those two learning environments, school and family, cover most of our formative years. 
 
5. (The fifth argument that it is not human nature to compete...) Competition is with us not because it has to be but because it is self-perpetuating. Any mode of social interaction breeds more of itself or it ceases to be a mode of social interaction.

 
6. Some psychologists, following Martin Hoffman, believe humans have an inborn "empathic distress" response. This is even seen in newborns. Two day old infants in hospital nurseries often become agitated and cry at the sound of another infant's cry, much more so then at other sounds. Empathic distress is so unpleasant that children are driven to help others in order to reduce it.

 
7. If competitiveness was human nature, we wouldn't find non-competitive societies--but we do! Many subsahara African, east Asian, and Native American Indian societies were and are non-competitive. In fact, ours is a uniquely competitive culture. The United States is the most violent industrial country.

Margaret Mead, in Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive Peoples concluded: 
 

competitive and cooperative behavior on the part of individual members of a society is fundamentally conditioned by the total social emphasis of that society... 

That is, competitiveness is not nature but nurture. It is not the presence or absence of resources that determines a society's competitiveness, but its cultural norms. 

Myth #2: Competition is More Productive than other Forms of Human Interactions

Competition, which is the instinct of selfishness, is another word for dissipation of energy, while combination is the secret of efficient production. 
 -- Edward Bellamy "Looking Backward" 

• 65 studies found cooperation promotes higher achievement than competition (8 the reverse, 36 no difference)
• 108 studies found cooperation promotes higher achievement than independent work (6 the reverse, 43 no difference).

These studies were done in an education environment. Peter Blau conducted one of the early studies in a work environment. He compared two groups of interviewers in an employment agency. One group was highly competitive. They hoarded job notifications instead of posting them for all to see. The second, cooperative group shared employment opportunities as well as applicant resumes. Using the number of positions filled as the measure of performance, the cooperative group significantly outperformed the competitive group.

Roger Helmreich, of the University of Texas, did more comprehensive research on productivity and competition in traditional work settings expecting to see different results. He studied:

• PhD scientists. He used how often their work was cited as a measure of performance and used a questionnaire to measure their competitiveness. He found the two were negatively linked.
• Male businessmen and used salaries as the measure of success and again found that, in general, the more competitive the individual the less successful.
• 1300 undergraduates using GPA as measure of success and found the same thing.
• Fifth and sixth grade students using standardized achievement tests as performance measure, he found the same thing.
• Airline pilots, he found the same thing.
• Airline reservation agents, he found the same thing.

What we learn from these studies is that intentional competition is associated with lower performance.

There was an article in the Raleigh, North Carolina newspaper, News and Observer, on 11/7/91, titled "Women are better bosses, study shows". Think about our social training: boys are taught to compete and to stand out, girls to nurture and to cooperate. To me, a nurturing, team-oriented manager is a better manager or rather a better leader. Listen to what the study found: 

They (women) are leaders, team players, colleagues, facilitators, employee advocates and consensus builders. They treat the men and women who work for them as equals. They don't use power to control others. They listen. They encourage. They nurture. 

Why Competition Fails

Competitive success is an extrinsic motivator and extrinsic motivation undermines intrinsic motivation. Did you ever have something, maybe a hobby, that you enjoyed doing then somehow an extrinsic motivation became tied to it? Perhaps people started paying you to do it. Did it start to become less fun? Did your performance suffer? Extrinsic motivation negatively impacts long-term performance. High performing individuals are intrinsically motivated. High performance is voluntary. You cannot beat high performance out of someone with a stick nor tempt it out with a carrot. It is the fire in the belly, the inner drive that leads to high performance. 

In addition to being an extrinsic motivator, another reason competition is less productive is that it precludes the more efficient use of resources that cooperation allows. 

• Teams succeed because the sum is greater than the parts
• Cooperation enables coordination of effort and division of labor
• Cooperation minimizes duplicate effort
• In a cooperative environment, it is safe to explore problems, take risks, and play with possibilities. 

Consider how competition affects the following:

• Journalism

The goal of competitive journalists is to get the story on first. Hype it. Sensationalize it. Is it a good use of our resources and in the public's best interests to have a few hundred reporters cover the Super Bowl? The Mike Tyson rape trial?
 

• Legal system

The United States has about 6% of the world's population and about 70% of the world's lawyers (if you believe Dan Qualye's numbers). That is yet another measure of the competitiveness of our society.

Our legal system operates on the adversarial model. That is, there are two sides, each having its own advocate. The advocate's goal is to win without violating the law. Both sides exaggerate their case and somehow combined, a lack of exaggeration is supposed to result. Does any reasonable person think that bitter partisanship in opposite directions will result in truth? In justice?

A few years ago I saw Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia on a PBS show and the question was put to him, "What is the purpose of the legal system in the United States? Is it to uncover truth? Ensure justice? Mete out punishment?" His answer was, "None of those things." He said the purpose of the legal system was to make decisions. Well, the adversarial model can be used for that, but so could a coin toss. I believe we want more from our legal system.
 

• Education system

It's in a sorry state. The primary thing that schools teach, and they teach this well, is competition. We grade on the curve. You got an 89 on the test? Too bad, yours is the lowest score. I recall getting a B for getting 20% of the questions right on a physics test on electro-magnetic radiation. Is that any way to measure success?
 

• Political parties

Is what we get the best we can get? Listen to these guys. According to every Republican, nearly everything every Democrat says is crazy, nonsense, stupid, or, charitably, poor judgement. And all the Democrats say the same thing about all the Republicans. Nearly all of these guys get between 40 and 60 percent of the votes cast. How can they have such supposedly polar positions?
 

• Television programming

The goal of television programming is to win the market, not produce higher quality. They rarely even try for that.

Productivity: Beyond the Individual's Perspective

Had we gone for a breakthrough, we would have found that I only wanted the meat of the orange to eat while you only wanted the peel to work with in a recipe. Compromise short-circuited a win/win possibility.

"Ahh," but the competition advocate says, "What if both parties wanted the meat of the orange to eat?" On its surface that sounds like a hard question to answer but let's look at the situation in more detail. The example was contrived. We need to make it more real by considering causes, consequences, and context. We can always ask ourselves the following questions:

• Why is the desired object in short supply?
• Is it really the desired object?
• What might have prevented this shortness?
• How will a competitive response impact us in the future?

So in this case, with the most serious shortage imaginable, a cooperative effort made the pie bigger.

What I am saying here is that we need to question our basic beliefs. We need to cooperatively question our basic beliefs!

Let us consider shifting our perspectives:

1. Whose advantage is being considered?

In the West, it is the individual's, in east Asia, subsahara Africa, and in other societies, it is the group.  Let's ask ourselves, do we want to promote the common interest -OR- the interest of the individual at the expense of others?
 

2. What is success in the long haul?

Did you ever go to a concert and sit behind someone taller than you? What you can do is stand to see over that person. This is successful in the short term but what happens is either you get yelled at or the people behind then around you stand. Eventually the wave of standing people sweeps up the person in front of you. Now you can't see again. So you go for another short term solution. You stand on your tiptoes. Again, this sweeps around from behind, to beside, to in front of you so that eventually the person in front of you is on tiptoes. Now you are on straining to stay on your tiptoes and able to see less than when you were sitting down.

The same type of short-sightedness has led to terrible abuses of our environment. We would do better to keep the bigger picture in mind.

On IBM Internal Competition

1. Use this comparison as an inspiration to study or work harder. This is an independent approach to improving productivity.
2. Ask you for help, perhaps you could show me some techniques to improve my productivity and maybe, coupled with my own techniques, I could raise my output to 400 LOC/day and then I could help you become more productive. This is a cooperative approach to improving productivity.
3. Have a competitive attitude and focus on beating you. I could write lots of lousy code, I could look to code easier modules postponing the more complex coding which may inaccurately show how the project is doing with respect to its schedules, I might even try to sabotage you so your output drops and it's easier for me to beat you.

This was an imaginary example, but I think we've all seen real cases in which something similar has happened in IBM. Outsiders have seen it as well. PC Week 12/2/91 writing about IBM internal competition:

As long as they (IBM product organizations) essentially compete internally with each other, it is not going to be beneficial to the end user.

Infighting will keep crushing products before they reach the marketplace.

Myth #3: Competition is More Enjoyable than other Forms of Human Interactions

Play is a voluntarily chosen, pleasing activity. It is an end in itself. Play frees us from seriousness. Results do not matter if we love what we are doing for its own sake.

The wit G.K.Chesterton said; "If a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing badly." Think about it. If a thing is worth doing at all, stop--end of clause. It is worth doing. It is worth doing good, bad, or ugly. It is worth doing, we just said it was. Play is like that. Activities we love doing for their own sake are like that.

Think about one of your favorite experiences. Maybe a trip you took, a friend you spent time with, your first love. See this experience in your mind's eye. Make it as real as you can. Try to re-experience what you felt and thought. Let the warmth swell up and wash over you. It is a wonderful thing having these fond, warming memories. Now, how good a job did you do at remembering? At re-experiencing? Those are ridiculous questions to ask. Whatever we were remembering/re-experiencing, we were doing for the sake of enjoyment, not for testing purposes. 

If we associate rules with an activity, that activity becomes less playful. If it becomes product-oriented or otherwise extrinsically motivated, the activity is no longer play.

Bertrand Russell wrote: "It is not only work that is poisoned by the philosophy of competition, leisure is poisoned just as much." Competition, structural or attitudinal, involves extrinsic motivation. Winning is the goal and rules are defined to determine who wins. Our leisure, when we compete, is no longer play. 

Competition enthusiasts cite many benefits for competition. 

• Exercise
• Teamwork
• Zest
• Pushing oneself
• Strategy
• Total involvement
• Existential affirmation, that is one can experience a sense of triumph over death, freedom
• Thrill of victory

• Exercise
• Teamwork
• Zest
• Pushing oneself
• Strategy - there is a long-range strategy about a general approach up a mountain and a moment to moment strategy of selecting foot and hand holds.
• Total involvement
• Existential affirmation, imagine standing on the top of a mountain that took hours or maybe days to climb.
• Thrill of victory?? There wasn't anyone to beat! This last, the thrill of victory, is destructive. What we want is success without victory over others. 

• Allegiance is to the group, not to other individuals in it. As people change groups, they change allegiances. In such groups the motivation of personal accountability to others has been lessened.
• Inter-group competition spills over into intra-group competition (e.g., for salary, for playing time, for positions)
• Stroking aggressive fires within groups against other groups can lead to violence and, ultimately, wars.

• Musical chairs in which only chairs and not people are removed. The people in the game have to sit on fewer and fewer chairs until they have to pile on a single chair.
• Chinese checkers in which players coordinate their moves to reach home simultaneously
• Cooperative bowling - knock down 10 pins in as many rounds as there are players 
• Bump and Scoot volleyball (one player swaps sides on each ball over the net, go for minimal drops)

A final blow against the notion that competition is more enjoyable. Research shows that when given a choice, most people of all ages, though especially the young, the experts on play and having fun, choose cooperative games over competitive ones, or they dropout. 

The fourth myth about competition is that it builds character. Here's a quote that bridges the myth that competition is more enjoyable to the myth that it builds character. This is George Sage writing in the Journal of Physical Education and Recreation: 

organized sport -- from youth programs to the pros -- has nothing at all to do with playfulness -- fun, joy, self-satisfaction -- but is instead, a social agent for the deliberate socialization of people into the acceptance of...the prevailing social structure and their fate as workers within bureaucratic organizations. Contrary to the myths propounded by promoters, sports are instruments not for human expression, but of social stasis. 

Myth #4: Competition Builds Character 

Why do we compete? There are many reasons. We compete because:

• We are taught to do so. All through our most formative years we are taught it in our homes, in school, and in our "games"--competitive little leagues.
• Everyone around us does so. They were taught in the same ways.
• Competitive outlook is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I believe that you are always trying to beat me--whether or not you've given me any reason to believe that, it's just something I believe about everyone--I will try to beat you. I will try to get over you or to knock you down. At some point, if we continue to interact, you'll respond, if only out of defense, in a way that I would consider aggressive, competitive. "Ah hah," I'd conclude, "I always knew you were trying to beat me!" So when we start to have a competitive attitude, it sweeps us away with it. 
• It never occurs to us not to do so.
• Success in our culture seems to demand we do so. 

• To overcome fundamental doubts about our capabilities and to compensate for low self-esteem.

Do you know someone who has to compete in everything? They have to make more money than you, have a nicer car, when you tell a story they have to tell a better one. What they are trying to do by "being better" is make up for a personal sense of inadequacy. They feel that if they could be number one, they would be noticed. If they were noticed they would be someone. And being someone would satisfy their esteem needs.

Research has exploded the claim that competition builds character. Studies have found:

• Competition can cause people to believe they are not the source of -- or in control of -- what happens to them. This has a negative impact on self-esteem as well as productiveness--yet another reason why competition makes us less productive.
• Competitive high school students had a greater dependence on evaluation and performance-based assessments of personal worth than less competitive students.
• High self-concept children found that they tended to be more self-critical after failure in competitive encounters. Over time, this could lead to a helplessness belief. In a New York Times article a few years ago, a sports medicine experts panel urged that children under 10, "should not participate in organized, competitive sports... (because) they could impede children's psychological, sociological and motor skill development."
• Kindness, sympathy, and unselfishness are notably absent among successful athletes.
• Children rated as highly competitive had lower empathy scores.

• Emotional maturity
• Well-adjusted social relations
• Strong personal identity
• Basic trust in and optimism about other people.

The sports psychologist Terry Orlick writes: 

Experiences in human cooperation are the most essential ingredient for the development of psychological health.

• In practice, most people lose. In most competitions in which we are involved, there are more losers than winners. Further, when we lose, we lose big since most competitions are public events.
• The more important winning is, the more destructive losing will be. Our society places high importance on winning. We equate losing with being a loser, and being a loser is about the worst thing you could be. We are talking high stakes here.
• Self-esteem is not unconditional but depends on the outcome of a contest
• Even when we win, victory is never permanent. It is a shaky ground on which to base our self-esteem.
• Winning doesn't establish competency. We can win a competition in some area, but not be competent in what we did and maybe we know we aren't competent. If others complement or recognize us for this win, we feel in some way we are lying to them. We won but we didn't do well. This sense of dishonesty negatively impacts our self-esteem.
• Being number 1 with respect to a quality can never satisfy the need for which it stands. That is, we want to be assured we are fundamentally good. Temporal success in one area doesn't do it.

The Hollowness of Victory

This is Tom Landry, former head coach of the Dallas Cowboys: 

...even after you've just won the Super Bowl -- especially after you've just won the Super Bowl -- there's always next year. If "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing," then "the only thing" is nothing -- emptiness, the nightmare of life without ultimate meaning. 

Winning doesn't satisfy us -- we need to do it again, and again. The taste of success seems merely to whet the appetite for more. When we lose, the compulsion to seek future success is overpowering; the need to get out on the course the following weekend is irresistible. We cannot quit when we are ahead, after we've won, and we certainly cannot quit when we're behind, after we've lost. We are addicted. 

Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs, winner of this year's Super Bowl:

The longer you stay in it, the highs aren't as high and the lows are much lower.

The World Health Organization defines "addiction" as 

A pathological relationship to a mood altering event, experience, or thing that has life damaging consequences. (Italics added)

Look at the set-up for addiction to competition in our society. We are a society of people with low self-esteem. We were generally raised under unhealthy parenting rules by well-meaning parents who were similarly raised. We are bombarded by marketing messages telling us we are inadequate. We need to have this, we need to be more like that. These are idealized images that we cannot attain, yet we are made to feel inadequate for our failure to attain them. We are a society that is set-up for addictions.

Society presents us with a cure-all for our neediness. Winning! If you could win, if you could be number one, you'd be popular, sexy, successful, acclaimed. Anything you could ever want. Fortunately, by its very nature, competition limits the number of people who could find their high in it. If you lose often when you compete, as many people will, you won't likely keep coming back to it and find yourself in the downward spiral of addiction. Unfortunately, many of us find a vicarious thrill living through the competitive success of our sports heroes and heroines. It feels safer, we have less at stake when we are fans rather than competitors. So we fund and perpetuate this poison that is competition even though this once-removed competitiveness suffers from all the problems we have been describing. 

Instead of contributing to our self-esteem, beating other people contributes only to the need to continue trying to beat other people. Those whose self-esteem is lowest, whose psychological need is greatest, are those who will be most powerfully hooked on competition, directly or vicariously.

The more we reward being number one, the more we contribute to an addiction to competition. 

Competition: Barrier to Getting Our Needs Met

• Losing; being labelled a "loser"
• Winning; what we derogatively call "choking", may be a fear of winning because we don't want to make others lose. We may prefer not to win out of a concern for others or because we fear they will reject us if we make them lose.
• Interpersonal tension caused by competition.

Abraham Maslow, father of humanistic psychology, identified five levels of needs of human beings. Satisfaction of needs at one level required satisfaction of needs on earlier levels. The first and most basic level of human needs identified by Maslow are our survival needs. We need air, water, food, shelter, etc. to survive.

Our second level of need is a need for security. We need to be free of always being hypervigilant.

Our third level need is for love and a sense of belonging. Competition strains our ability to meet that need by creating interpersonal tension.

The fourth level of human needs is our esteem needs. We have a need to feel good about and to love ourselves. We've just seen that meeting our esteem needs is undercut by competition.

Our fifth and highest level needs are for self-actualization. The need to achieve, to accomplish and do. To fully develop one's potential. Competition makes it more difficult to self-actualize because it makes meeting our belonging and esteem needs more difficult.

Competitive striving leads to Intrasocial hostility leads to Isolation leads to Anxiety leads to Increased competitive striving leads to Increased intrasocial hostility leads to Increased isolation leads to Increased anxiety ... and so on and so on.

• A product orientation in which who or what we are is determined by what we've done. 
• Either/Or thinking; things must be black or white, good or bad, us or them. This is mental unhealth. 
• Conformity. Competition only works if people agree on goals and rules. Competition dampens creativity and risk-taking.

We've looked at the four myths of competition. Now let's think about what competition does to our interpersonal relationships. 

Against Each Other: Interpersonal Considerations 

• Lovers who compete?
• Parents who compete?
• Children who compete?

As competitiveness limits and lowers our self-esteem, it also limits the depth of the relationships we can share with others. The lower our self-esteem, the less able we are to extend ourselves to others.

Scott Peck, in his best selling book The Road Less Travelled defined "love" as 

the willingness to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.

It also moves us towards ill-will. The steps are not that great between:

Wanting victory leads to wanting others' defeat leads to wanting bad things in general for others.

Competitiveness creates: 

• Envy towards the stronger
• Contempt for the weaker
• Distrust towards everyone

There was a famous experiment done in the late 40's and early 50's in Oklahoma by a psychologist named Sherif. This was the Robbers' Cave experiment. The experiment involved boys in a summer camp. There were four stages to the experiment. In the first stage, the boys engaged in activities on a camp-wide basis. During this time, friendships among the boys developed. In the second stage, the boys were divided into two groups, the Rattlers and Eagles. Close friends were assigned to different groups. In the third stage, the camp authorities, that is the researchers, organized regular competitions between the groups. Overt hostility developed between the Rattlers and Eagles both within and outside the organized competitions. There were fights between members of the two groups, raids between the groups. Boys that were friends became enemies.

When we assume or accept a social structure, it tends to lead to stereotyping. We exaggerate similarities among those in our group and exaggerate the differences between us and those in the other group. 

The recent restructuring of IBM lines of business into business segments has good intentions; increased accountability and reduced overhead. I think increased responsibility may decrease internal IBM competition because that competition is very costly and, presumably, people will be unwilling to be associated with such costs. On the other hand, given our competitive history, people may not recognize or they may recognize and be unable to give up what has been an IBM way of life. I am concerned that we may fall into an us vs. them mindset from this restructure. There are some things we can do to guard against this mentality.

The fourth stage of the Robber's Cave experiment provided the competing groups with superordinate goals. These were relevant, compelling objectives desired by both groups but attainable only through cooperative effort. For example, the Rattlers and Eagles had to work together to rescue a truck bringing them food from being stuck in mud. Similarly, I believe it is in IBM's best interest to identify superordinate goals that will bring business segments together in their own best interests.

It is revealing that when Len Felton (no longer with IBM) presented the Networking Systems (NS) Line Of Business restructuring to the management that reports to him, he used the word "war" to describe how NS interacts with other companies developing products for the same or similar market. War: competition gone mad.

Dwight Eisenhower, a man who knew about wars, said about our competitive sports: "The true mission of American sports is to prepare young people for war."

It seems our business attitudes also perpetuate this mentality. Len Felton talks about war. The U.S. declares "economic war" on the Japanese.

Nathan Ackerman, father of family therapy: 

The strife of competition reduces empathic sympathy, distorts communication, impairs the mutuality of support and sharing, and decreases the satisfaction of personal need.

One must marvel at the intellectual quality of a teacher who can't understand why children assault one another in the hallway, playground and city street, when in the classroom the highest accolades are reserved for those who have beaten their peers. In many subtle and some not so subtle ways, teachers demonstrate that what children learn means less than that they triumph over their classmates. Is this not assault?...Classroom defeat is only the pebble that creates widening ripples of hostility. It is self-perpetuating. It is reinforced by peer censure, parental disapproval, and loss of self-concept. If the classroom is a model, and if that classroom models competition, assault in the hallways should surprise no one. 

This is what competition does to our interpersonal relationships. 

Interpersonal Benefits of Cooperation

Cooperative experiences promote more positive relationships among individuals...than do cooperation with intergroup competition, interpersonal competition, and individualistic experiences. 

• Encouragement given
• Encouragement received
• Sensitivity
• Other-orientation
• Perspective-taking
• Communication
• Trust.

While competition separates us from others in order to better them, effective, cooperative teams enhance our relationships by honoring our differences. 

Competition and Cheating

The aim of competition is to win; the temptation is to win at any cost.

Pick a field in which people are competing and we'll find there are people going outside the boundaries:

• Sports (pro and "amateur") - We find steroids, point shaving, recruitment violations, little leaguers using false ages and addresses.
• Politics - We find smears, bribes, illegal contributions, spying, lying, wiretaps.
• Business - We find bribes, sabotage, price fixing (Pine State was just caught gypping the government out of money for school kids' milk)
• In law we find built into the system, the selective use of evidence--legalized lying.
• Journalists stretch the truth for effect.
• In scientific research, which bills its mission as an honest, open search for truth, we find the overstating of results and the fudging of results as researchers compete for prestige and funding. What has investigating low temperature fusion cost us?

Michael Novak, from the "Evans and Novak" television program, is a competition enthusiast. This is a guy who wants activities involving pushes and shoves set up for females. He thinks they're missing out by not having enough of those types of sports. Novak wrote a book entitled, The Joy of Sports: End Zones, Bases, Baskets, Balls, and the Consecration of the American Spirit. This is a quote from that book: 

The true practise of sport goes on, beneath the moralistic mythology of virtue and clean-living. Basketball without deception could not survive. Football without aggression, holding, slugging, and other violations -- only a few of which the referees actually will censure -- could not be played. Baseball without cunning, trickery, and pressing for advantage would scarcely be a contest. Our sports are lively with the sense of evil. ...Sports provide an almost deliberate exercise in pushing the psyche to cheat and take advantage, to be ruthless, cruel, deceitful, vengeful, and aggressive. 

Beyond Competition

The prevailing mode of competition in American culture thus continues despite convincing evidence that it is damaging to physical, spiritual, emotional, and social health. 

If we are to change, and given that there are both structural and intentional types of competition, which do we change first? I think we need to change them together.

We can change our competitive attitudes by:

• Striving to gain in self-esteem. As we feel better about ourselves, we will be less tempted to seek acclaim and personal satisfaction in beating others. To gain in self-esteem, I recommend, for starters, books by Nathanial Branden and John Bradshaw.
• Directing our attention away from results when we participate in structural competition (e.g., don't keep score)
• Making a conscious effort not to be intentionally competitive. We can think WIN/WIN. Stephen Covey, identified WIN/WIN thinking as one of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in his book by that title.

• Be aware of the implications of competition and of cooperation and tell others, especially children
• Relate to children as unconditionally worthy individuals. We don't compare them and we don't reward them contingent on performance.

We can:

• Organize cooperative games

• Shape our workplace. I spend lots of my life at work. I want it to be a healthy environment for personal growth. I want it to be enjoyable. I want to maximize my effectiveness, to self-actualize. I won't get these in a competitive atmosphere!

Here's an editorial by Charles Garfield from the Raleigh News and Observer, dated December 19, 1991. Charles Garfield is the author of Second to None: How Our Smartest Companies Put People First. The title of the editorial is, "Akers may be purging IBM's most valuable asset." The asset Garfield writes about is a dedicated highly skilled, innovative work force. Rankings and wholesale reductions in the work force may produce, "a climate of fear and profound demoralization that results in further declines in productivity."

I too think the ranking system is a mistake and I think we can and should change it.

I'm willing to work extra hours, to give this presentation, to make it available on audiotape, to do what I can to help change the competitive structure of IBM.
 

• We can change the institutional supports for competition by influencing structures used in schools. Our site recently sponsored a presentation by Ruth Murphy, principal at the New Hope Elementary school, and some of her teachers. New Hope is a model school in which students learn at their own pace. Instead of grades, teachers develop a portfolio, sent home quarterly, that assesses the child's performance in the basics and other subjects as well as including comments about their emotional development. They sit down with parents and go through the portfolio. 

There was a front page article in the January 8th News and Observer about two more model schools being planned for the Triangle. We can voice support for these efforts and help school boards move in this direction without extra funding. I believe that most of it has to do with an attitude shift among the administrators and teachers.
 

• We can reduce structural competition by avoiding the creation of scarcity. For example, my area recently started recognizing a Most Valuable Person, an MVP, each quarter. The MVP gets a few perks like a free meal with our director and a choice parking spot. We've created scarcity where there was none before. Now, if people in the area were serious about this, and at least some are, there would be a temptation to develop a competitive mindset to win this award. We could find people politiking for it. That is, they might spend energy making sure others know how wonderful their work is--thereby having less time to do wonderful work. Their supporters might spend some of their time and energy trying to out-praise the supporters of someone else; giving them less time to do their work.

The "losers", 179 people out of 180 every quarter, will have lots of opportunities to experience "losing". With no personnel changes and no repeat winners, the majority of people would have to wait over 22 years before they won the award. Some poor soul, the last "winner", would have to wait 45 years! Given those numbers, many won't care about the award and not consider themselves "losers", though they may feel some unease when management treats the award as something important. Some people will deny that they care about the award when they do; they choose dishonesty with themselves over "losing" or being passed over, that is rejected, by their peers.

We need to eliminate scarcity, not create it. Programs like an MVP Award are misguided.

It is important for the controllers as well as the controlled to have their awareness raised. The concentration of power over others through the divide and conquer technique that is widespread competition, fails all of us. Each of us needs to be personally powerful for our individual and collective health. 

Summary

First summary point

I hope I have conveyed the following, that:

• Competition is unnecessary - It is not human nature, and it isnot a necessary part of our social structure 
• Competition is unhealthy; individually and collectively 

and that I have inspired you so that:
 

• As individuals we act to reduce competition in our lives and the lives of others 
• We educate others about all of this.

We've seen that the notion of competition is a poisonous one. Many people who have heard this presentation admit that competition, with a win/lose meaning, is unnecessary and unattractive, however they want to continue using the word "competition" by assigning it their own personal, acceptable meaning. They want it to mean "successful" or "striving to do better" or to have some other noble meaning. I believe it is critically important that we don't spread the insidious poison that is "competition" in the win/lose sense and I believe we will spread it if we disguise it by personally redefining it. Note that its only dictionary definition is the win/lose definition.

If you are tempted to continue to use the word, think about this analogous case. If, when I use the word "hate", I mean "dislike and wish to avoid," then I will use "hate" rather liberally for there are many things I dislike and wish to avoid. I may even be acknowledged by self and others as a "hateful person". I would apply that label to most, maybe all, others as well. Now, I see and describe the world as being full of hateful people. Those who like me or think well of me and my opinions in other matters, may give my perceived opinion on this topic some matter of respect, even though their understanding of hate may differ from mine. We are spreading a poison because I wanted to use a different definition for a word. One that only differs from the dictionary or public definition of hate in degree; my definition didn't require an intense dislike, only a dislike.

Had I applied the word "hate" to the positive concept of, "think something could be improved and willing to work on improving it", there would have been even more confusion, suspicion, and miscommunication. Let's not use the word "competition" unless we mean a win/lose structure or mentality. We will become healthier by recognizing and calling out ill-health. 

If we want a word to capture the notion of "cooperatively challenging each other to excell", I propose a new word: commuprove. It comes from the Latin prefix, com-, meaning "together", the Latin mutus meaning "reciprocal" and from which the English word "mutual" was derived, and from the Latin prou meaning "useful" and from which the English word "improve" was derived. Commuprove, coming together to provide mutual usefulness; the usefulness may be improvement or enjoyment. Commuprovation is different from cooperation since the latter focuses on a common goal. In commuprovation, we come together for our own benefits, we are thinking win/win, there may not be a common goal beyond us both succeeding.

So, for example, if I am involved in a competitively structured game, such as street hockey, I can reduce its competitive structure by not keeping score, and I can have an attitude of commuprovation with my fellow players. I can recognize that we are there to help each other. If someone puts a move on me, scores on me, or stops me from scoring, I can thank them for challenging me to do better and showing me why my effort was inadequate.

I don't think many people have this mindset right now, though some want to use the word "competition" to apply to it. I prefer we use a new word because it is a new concept to most people, and I hope that the new word will lead to that attitude becoming more common. At the very least, when one uses "commuprove", people will ask what it means and you have the opportunity to raise their awareness about competition. 

For some additional incentive to use this new word, here's a quote from Charles Handy's book, The Age of Unreason: 

Words are the bugles of social change. When our language changes, behavior will not be far behind...new imagery, signalled by new words, is as important as new theory. 

The third point I wish to make in my summary is to present a challenge to the skeptics.

If you reject the claim that all competition is unhealthy, I ask you to do three things:

1. Reflect on when you think we should compete. If competition between lovers, within a family, within a company is unhealthy, what are the conditions for healthy competition? I claim you will find this to be a slippery slope argument and you will have to reject the premise that competition is ever healthy.
2. Rebut the points made in this presentation. Better still, get Alfie Kohn's book, No Contest: The Case Against Competition, and analyze it. Find errors in it. If you cannot find some fundamental flaws, then analyze yourself and think about why you don't want to accept the claim that all competition is unhealthy.
3. If you want to think of yourself as a "competitor", think of yourself as someone who is trying to make others lose. Identify who you want to lose; put a face on them. See if you still want to be a competitor, a "fierce" competitor, that is, someone who really wants to make others lose.

In the December 1991 Creativity! magazine, there is a brief letter from John Akers. I quote: 

Let's put first things first. We have all heard shortsighted business people attribute to Vince Lombardi: "Winning is not the most important thing, it's the ONLY thing." That is a good quotation for firing up a team, but as a business philosophy it is sheer nonsense. ... (Lombardi) knew that some things count more than others. Businessmen and women can be unabashedly proud of their companies. But the good of an entire society transcends that of any corporation. The moral order of the world transcends any single nation-state.

In another article in the same magazine, another Akers quote, "We are, at the bottom, putting competition into the IBM system." Bob Ripp, IBM vice president and IBM Treasurer, "Competition will work both ways, it will be a great disciplining factor within IBM." Akers, at the December's Senior Management Meeting talking about the reshaped IBM: 

(it) frees the energies, the skills and the creativity of our people to compete and to win in chosen markets with real risks and rewards. 

In IBM's 1991 Annual Report, Akers refers to our "aggressive actions to make IBM more competitive", we are "on the offensive", "a leaner, tougher, and smarter competitor."

Our annual reports, Think and Creativity! magazines are rife with the word "competition" or some form of it in its win/lose sense. That bothers me. Sometimes I cringe when I see it, out of fear of what it means for IBM's and my future, other times I am just uncomfortable, being reminded yet again of the pervasiveness of this poison.

I agree with the Akers Creativity! quote. That: 

the good of an entire society transcends that of any corporation. The moral order of the world transcends any single nation-state.

Fifth summary point

My fifth and final summary point. I want to share with you, two personal goals of mine. Had I shared them earlier, they wouldn't have made much sense. Now I think they will.

1. My first goal is to not be a good sport. "Sportsmanship" requires a context of competition. If there were no unfulfilling work, there would be no concept of "leisure". There would be no notion of "blasphemy" if there were not God beliefs. My goal is to not be a good sport because my goal is to be free of competition; structurally and attitudinally. I do not want to be a "winner", if that means making others lose.
2. My second goal is to influence others to have the same two goals.

© 1999 frantzs@geocities.com