When your colleagues are also your rivals
The modern company exalts both competition and co-operation. Competition is the defining feature of markets; inside organisations, too, employees compete for limited resources. Sometimes that contest is obvious, as when performance is openly ranked or there is a race for a specific job. Sometimes it is left unspoken: there is only so much money to go round and only so many promotion opportunities on offer. Either way, competition is always there.
Yet the reason firms exist is to co-ordinate the activities of many actors in pursuit of common goals. Departments and teams are expected to work together. Collaborative behaviour is usually celebrated. Companies dole out awards for the most helpful co-workers, not the Macbeth prize for the colleague most likely to murder you in your sleep.
Rivalry and teamwork can go together nicely. A paper published in 2022 by Eric VanEpps of the University of Utah, Einav Hart of George Mason University and Maurice Schweitzer of the University of Pennsylvania looked at the best way to handle an old conundrum. To make a good impression on the higher-ups, you need to highlight your own achievements. But bragging about how great you are is not a recipe for being liked. A strategy of taking the credit for some things and doling out praise to colleagues for others resolved this problem.
2024-01-11 08:57:26
Post from www.economist.com
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