Abstract
AbstractWhether people compete or cooperate with each other has consequences for their own performance and that of organizations. To explain why people compete or cooperate, previous research has focused on two main factors: situational outcome structures and personality types. Here, we propose that—above and beyond these two factors—situational cues, such as the format in which people receive feedback, strongly affect whether they act competitively, cooperatively, or individualistically. Results of a laboratory experiment support our theorizing: After receiving ranking feedback, both students and experienced managers treated group situations with cooperative outcome structures as competitive and were in consequence willing to forgo guaranteed financial gains to pursue a—financially irrelevant—better rank. Conversely, in dilemma situations, feedback based on the joint group outcome led to more cooperation than ranking feedback. Our study contributes to research on competition, cooperation, interdependence theory, forced ranking, and the design of information environments.
Highlights
Competition is deeply ingrained in society and in organizations
We propose that inconspicuous features of the situation, such as the structure of feedback (Herold & Greller, 1977; Moore & Klein, 2008), are a third factor that contributes to explaining when people compete and when they cooperate, above and beyond the objective outcome structure and individual dispositions
Our results are highly informative for the discussion on forced ranking, as we show that even in the absence of any change in the objective outcome structure, receiving ranking feedback prompts some people to value relative performance over absolute performance, and results in destructive competition
Summary
Competition is deeply ingrained in society and in organizations. It is often seen as an inspiration to succeed, a motor to innovate, or a ubiquitous disposition that guides the invisible hand of the market.
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