Nonprofits compete with collaborators and collaborate with competitors regularly. Collaboration, a long-standing normatively preferred strategy for nonprofits, is utilized as modus operandi without thought to the potential unintended consequences. While competition is a dirty word for nonprofits, it is a necessary but undesirable reality and should not be avoided without consideration to the potential benefits. Nonprofit leaders may not be willing to explicitly acknowledge the use of competition as an operational strategy, which makes room for cognitive dissonance to impact the study of nonprofits. This piece identifies impacts of cognitive dissonance offering direction for future research exploring the interactive nature of competing with collaborators.

非营利组织与合作者竞争，并定期与竞争对手合作。协作是非营利组织长期以来在规范上的首选策略，它被用作操作方式，而没有考虑到潜在的意想不到的后果。尽管竞争对非营利组织而言是一个肮脏的词，但这是一个必要但不理想的现实，在不考虑潜在收益的情况下应避免竞争。非营利组织领导者可能不愿意明确承认使用竞争作为一种运营策略，这为认知失调提供了影响非营利组织研究的空间。本文确定了认知失调的影响，为未来的研究提供了方向，以探索与合作者竞争的互动性质。