What is the best option for human relationships, Cooperating or competing?
Human survival has resulted from countless collaborations and competition. On one side, collaboration is implemented to achieve a mutual goal that requires cooperation between stakeholders. On the other hand, competition is to fight for the limited resources to fulfil the needs and wants,
The capability to cooperate has brought an unprecedented progression to society. An individual only has a limited physical and cognitive ability where it is impossible to achieve something single-handedly. Creating a project that requires manpower-intensive labour often makes one realize the insufficiency of capability. With the connectivity between humans nowadays, cooperation can be easily actualized globally.
To be cooperative, not everyone is necessary to have a shared goal, yet the stakeholders should not have any conflict of interest. For example, a company owner wants to grow the company while his employee wants to get a salary.
Collaboration may arguably be promoted more than the competition. Competition can be done indirectly in a human interaction unless it is officially created and established. Competition, positively speaking, could improve the outcome by being innovative and achieving better resource allocation.
However, competition in an unhealthy way could result in deteriorated outcomes. Unhealthy competition can harm the opposition while it is not necessarily being productive. The main focus shifted from improving the quality to creating some inhibition and counterproductive action.
In a way, the counterproductive action arguably will harm the stakeholder. Yet, human proclivity for self-interest always becomes the priority in the competition. Collaboration and competition are adopted based on personal stances and interests.
One often decides to pick up either option in a scenario. However, the lack of flexibility often makes the decision-maker ignore the optimal outcome by picking one of the options. By cooperating and competing healthily, it could create a value that would be beneficial.
“By not limiting the option in cooperation or competition, keeping the flexibility could result in better decision making.”
What is your opinion on deciding when to cooperate and compete?
TheCoffeeTalk 