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Rivals and colleagues: How managers should balance competition and co-operation
竞争对手与同事：管理者应该如何平衡竞争与合作。
The modern company exalts both competition and co-operation. Competition is the defining feature of markets; inside organisations, too, employees compete for limited resources.
现代企业既推崇竞争，也推崇合作。竞争是市场的本质特征，在组织内部，员工也会为有限的资源而竞争。
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.
有时，这种竞争是显性的，比如公开绩效排名，对某一份工作竞争上岗。有时，这种竞争是隐形的：可以分配的钱只有那么多，晋升机会也只有那么多。无论是哪种方式，竞争总是存在的。
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.
然而，公司存在的原因是协调多个行动主体的活动，以追求共同的目标。人们期待各部门和各团队能共同合作。
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.
合作行为通常会受到赞扬。公司为最乐于助人的同事颁发奖项，而不是为最有可能在你睡着时谋杀你的同事颁发麦克白奖。
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.
竞争和团队合作可以良好地结合在一起。犹他大学的埃里克·凡艾普斯、乔治梅森大学的艾纳夫·哈特和宾夕法尼亚大学的莫里斯·施维茨尔在2022年发表了一篇论文，研究了解决一个古老难题的最佳方法。
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.
要给上级留下好印象，你需要凸显自己的成就。但吹嘘自己有多棒并不招人喜欢。对此，一个解决办法是将某些事情归功于自己，并为其他事情而表扬同事。
It is not easy for managers to strike the right balance between encouraging contests and collaboration. (You just need to hear the word “co-opetition” to know how ugly things can get.) Competition can spur more effort but it can also have unintended consequences.
对于管理者来说，要在鼓励竞争和促进合作之间取得适当的平衡并非易事。（听到“合作性竞争”这个词，你就知道这种平衡多难做到。）竞争可以刺激人们更加努力，但也可能产生意想不到的后果。
A recent study by Eddy Cardinaels of Tilburg University and Christoph Feichter of the Vienna University of Economics and Business asked supervisors to use a forced performance-ranking system to assess workers’ creativity.
蒂尔堡大学的埃迪·卡迪纳尔斯和维也纳经济贸易大学的克里斯托弗·费克特最近的一项研究，要求主管使用强制绩效排名系统来评估员工的创造力。
Forced rankings require managers to assign employees to given places on a scale: if there are ten workers, say, then one must come top and one must come tenth. This approach just stressed everyone out—a bit like bellowing “relax” in someone’s face. People tried harder but they also became less creative.
强制排名要求管理者将员工分配到指定的等级位置上：例如，如果有十个员工，那么必须有一个人排在第一位，也要有一个人排在第十位。这种方法让每个人都感到压力很大，有点像朝着某个人咆哮“你给我放松”。结果员工们更努力了，但他们也变得不那么有创造力了。
