Is Cooperation Desirable?
Cooperation is a state wherein two or more parties (individuals, organizations, or nations) are behaving in a way that achieves mutual gains. By this definition, cooperation can only emerge in those environments that allow win-win situations. Companies find themselves very often in this scenario when employees work with each other or when they deal with external customers. Given its positive outcome, it’s a widespread goal for most organizations to foster cooperation among their population.
The roots of human cooperation, like of all human behavior goes back many millennia. Humans developed the unique trait of “social learning”, the learning of new techniques and behaviors by imitating others and improving upon it once we understand the goal of the action.
In our competitive environment this had two consequences. Firstly, social learning is also visual theft as one member learns from the ideas of another with no previous effort, therefore mistrust and unwillingness to share arise. However, a second consequence was cooperation.
Natural selection “found a way” for humans to align their interest with those of their group’s resulting in a competitive advantage. We developed a psychology of cooperation, resulting in feelings necessary for it to take place, like empathy for our group members, a conscience, guilt and shame, among other feelings. These nudge us to help relatives and people that belong to the same cultural group, giving us an advantage.
As an example, a platoon of soldiers that are ready to die for their platoon will be more successful in the battlefield; they increase their chances of surviving.
Lastly, for this cooperative system to be sustainable, individuals with these traits must ensure that those with whom they interact share these traits and will cooperate. To make sure it is the case, we create groups, tribes, and parochialisms. We even go as far as developing our own unique language and clothing, and vigilance for people in the group that might put its integrity at risk or, more so, for outsiders that don’t share these perceptible attributes.
So to summarize:
- As a consequence of our “social learning” we developed the ability to cooperate.
- To do so without being taken advantage of, we developed empathy towards our group members, mistrust towards the rest, and culture to differentiate the former from the latter.
- So, to promote cooperation in an organization, one should foster the group feeling by having a common culture and goal and we should be aware that it’s natural for us to be suspicious of anybody we don’t know or share cultural traits with.
The upside of cooperation is clear and its own existence is a proof of its advantage. A cooperating organization can become a lean and efficient execution machine. It’s sought-after as it wastes less energy and resources because of selfish motives–a situation referred to as the tragedy of the commons.
However, a cooperating organization can easily become a conservative workplace, with a homogeneous population with homogeneous ideas, reluctant to change at the first internal resistance. It can miss out on revolutionary products and services. It can be slow to adapt to a changing economic context, uncreative and dismissive of new ways of working. But remember: it’s lean and efficient in its old ways of working.
So is cooperation desirable after all?
It depends if we are talking about an innovative company, or a follower. (Which is not necessarily worse as there are many classical examples and studies of followers out-beating great innovators.)
Cooperation is critical for followers but dangerous for pioneers. For the former you need a strong and tangible culture to foster cooperation. For the latter, key success factors are diversity, risk taking and creativity, which arise by allowing conflict.
It’s not by chance that the greatest leaps forward in engineering and technology happened in a time and context of war…
So what kind of organization are you? And which one should you be?