Whether 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.

中文翻译：

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竞争对手无故？尽管有一致的激励措施，相对绩效反馈仍会造成破坏性竞争

人们之间相互竞争或合作对他们自己和组织的绩效都有影响。为了解释人们为什么竞争或合作，以前的研究集中在两个主要因素上：情境结果结构和人格类型。在此，我们提出，除了这两个因素之外，情况提示（例如人们接收反馈的格式）会严重影响他们是竞争，合作还是个人行为。实验室实验的结果支持我们的理论：在获得排名反馈后，学生和经验丰富的管理人员都将具有合作结果结构的小组情况视为竞争性结果，因此愿意放弃保证的财务收益以追求（财务上不相关的）更好的排名。相反，在困境中，基于联合小组结果的反馈比排名反馈带来的合作更多。我们的研究有助于研究竞争，合作，相互依赖理论，强制排名和信息环境的设计。