Research in organizational behavior increasingly reveals that workplaces structured around rivalry experience lower cooperation, higher stress, and diminished innovation. When employees see each other as opponents rather than allies, the organization ceases to function as a cohesive system. Like a body whose organs begin to compete instead of coordinate, the result is dysfunction, inefficiency, and eventual decline.
Against this backdrop, it becomes imperative to rethink what truly drives organizational success. Is progress really born of rivalry, or of collaboration? Does an enterprise flourish when its members compete—or when they cooperate toward a shared purpose? In this article, we examine the hidden costs of workplace competition—its effects on efficiency, effectiveness, creativity, and cohesion—and reveal why cooperation, not competition, remains the true cornerstone of enduring organizational growth.
The Organizational Consequences of Workplace Competition
While competition is often praised as a catalyst for performance, in reality, it frequently undermines the very foundations of organizational growth. The negative consequences of internal rivalry are both subtle and systemic—eroding efficiency, effectiveness, creativity, and collaboration. Let us consider some of these consequences more closely.
Inefficiency: The Hidden Cost of Rivalry
Efficiency, in the truest sense, is about achieving maximum output with minimum waste—using resources wisely to generate optimal results. At first glance, workplace competition may appear to drive efficiency. Employees arrive early, leave late, and push themselves harder in a bid to outshine peers. On the surface, this looks like dedication; but beneath it lies duplication, waste, and misalignment.
When employees compete rather than collaborate, their focus shifts from organizational goals to personal victories. A worker obsessed with outpacing others may invest disproportionate time perfecting one aspect of a task—often beyond what is necessary—while neglecting complementary skills that could enhance overall productivity. For example, an employee specializing in data analysis may refuse to collaborate with a colleague in operations simply because sharing insights could “give away” an advantage. The result? Missed synergies and inefficient resource use.
Even worse, this lack of collaboration can force organizations to outsource work unnecessarily. An internal specialist may exist with the required skill, but rivalry and poor communication prevent their contribution. Thus, as the International Labour Organization (ILO) notes in its Workplace Cooperation Framework (2023), “inefficient competition fragments work processes, increases operational costs, and obstructs the cross-functional learning essential for adaptability.” True efficiency, therefore, cannot thrive in an environment poisoned by rivalry—it depends on cooperation and trust.
Ineffectiveness: Hitting Targets, Missing the Purpose
To be effective is to achieve desired results—not merely in parts, but in the collective sense. Yet competition often promotes fragmented effectiveness at the expense of organizational success. Consider a sales team where individual members are given separate targets, with bonuses for the highest performer. Predictably, the race begins. Each salesperson focuses narrowly on personal metrics, guarding leads and information that could help others. Eventually, one person wins the bonus—yet the company as a whole may achieve less than it could have through teamwork.
This form of “target effectiveness” is deceptive. It rewards isolated success rather than collective achievement. The McKinsey Global Institute (2022) observes that “when organizations overemphasize individual performance metrics, they inadvertently suppress collaborative behavior and diminish overall team output.” In essence, the company celebrates the individual sprinter while losing the relay.
Moreover, valuable tacit knowledge—the kind gained through experience and intuition—remains unshared. In a cooperative environment, the top performer’s techniques could have been disseminated across the team, elevating the collective performance. But in a competitive setting, that learning loop is severed, leaving the organization weaker in the long run.
Creativity: The First Casualty of Competition
Creativity is the lifeblood of innovation, and innovation is the lifeblood of organizational sustainability. However, creativity thrives only in psychological safety—a condition in which employees feel secure to share ideas without fear of ridicule or exploitation. In competitive workplaces, this safety evaporates.
When employees view one another as rivals, they guard ideas instead of sharing them. Worse still, managers sometimes appropriate subordinates’ ideas as their own—a practice that not only breeds resentment but also stifles creative expression. As Harvard Business Review (2021) reports, “fear-based competition leads employees to self-censor, withholding potentially transformative ideas out of anxiety that credit or recognition will be misappropriated.”
This intellectual hoarding impoverishes the organization. In an atmosphere of mistrust, employees prefer conformity over experimentation. The African Development Bank’s Human Capital Outlook (2023) confirms this pattern, noting that “organizations with cooperative, cross-functional cultures report innovation rates nearly 40% higher than those driven by internal competition.” When workers feel that their ideas will be respected and fairly rewarded, they engage more deeply, and creativity flourishes.
The Silo Effect: When Departments Become Enemies
Perhaps the most destructive outcome of internal competition is the emergence of silos—rigid divisions between teams or departments that act more like rival firms than parts of a single entity. This phenomenon turns the organization against itself.
The “silo effect” occurs when departments prioritize their own goals, metrics, or prestige over the collective mission. Sales blames production for delays; finance withholds budgets to assert control; HR guards information to maintain authority. In extreme cases, departments even sabotage one another’s initiatives to gain internal advantage. The result is bureaucratic paralysis and reputational harm.
The World Economic Forum (WEF, 2023) describes silos as “the organizational equivalent of auto-immune disease—the system attacks itself, mistaking its own parts for threats.” When this happens, coordination fails, communication breaks down, and the customer experience deteriorates.
Moreover, external stakeholders—clients, investors, or partners—quickly sense this internal disunity. Projects suffer delays, messages contradict, and trust erodes. As one African management consultant summarized in PwC Africa Insights (2023), “departmental rivalry may win battles, but it always loses the war of competitiveness.”
Internal competition does not strengthen an organization—it weakens its core. It turns collaboration into conflict, wastes resources, discourages innovation, and fractures unity. The result is a company that may look busy, but not productive; ambitious, but not effective; and full of talent, yet lacking harmony.
An organization is, after all, like a body. When its parts compete rather than cooperate, it begins to destroy itself from within. True corporate vitality arises not from rivalry, but from rhythm—from the synchronized motion of people united by shared purpose and mutual respect.
Here’s a strong, persuasive introduction for “Transforming Rivalry into Synergy: The Cure for Workplace Competition.”
It sets a thoughtful, reformist tone that frames the rest of your piece as both a moral and managerial call to action.
The truth is that workplace competition is not a sign of excellence but of disorganization. It thrives where leadership fails to design coherent structures, where clarity gives way to confusion, and where incentives reward personal triumphs over collective achievement. As countless studies—from the International Labour Organization to McKinsey & Company—have shown, organizations built on rivalry may deliver short-term results, but they suffer long-term decay in morale, creativity, and cohesion.
The real challenge for leaders, therefore, is not to suppress competition but to transform it—to convert rivalry into synergy, conflict into cooperation, and ambition into alignment. This transformation begins when management learns that the purpose of organization is not to divide effort but to direct it, harmonizing individual talents into a shared rhythm of success. We delve further into that thought in the final part in the series.
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The author is a dynamic entrepreneur and the Founder and Group CEO of Groupe Soleil Vision, made up of Soleil Consults (US), LLC, NubianBiz.com and Soleil Publications. He has an extensive background In Strategy, Management, Entrepreneurship, Premium Audit Advisory, And Web Consulting. With professional experiences spanning both Ghana and the United States, Jules has developed a reputation as a thought leader in fields such as corporate governance, leadership, e-commerce, and customer service. His publications explore a variety of topics, including economics, information technology, marketing and branding, making him a prominent voice in discussions on development and business innovation across Africa. Through NubianBiz.com, he actively champions intra-African trade and technology-driven growth to empower SMEs across the continent?.
The post The Business Strategy Analyst with Jules Nartey-Tokoli: The ethics of competition: A philosophical inquiry into human motivation and workplace culture (III) appeared first on The Business & Financial Times.
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