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Cooperation vs. Competition: Resolving Workplace Conflict

Imagine a common workplace hurdle:  two colleagues—Alex from Sales and Priya from Marketing—are jointly preparing a spreadsheet for an upcoming quarterly business review. Late one evening, Alex revises the structure of the spreadsheet, reorders the data, and adds projections. The next morning, Priya logs in and discovers her inputs have been moved or removed. She feels her contributions have been disregarded. Alex believes he improved the document for clarity.

What starts as a simple task quickly spirals into conflict. Communication becomes strained. Collaboration deteriorates. This type of conflict is not uncommon—but how it unfolds depends significantly on the perceived nature of the relationship between the parties involved.

This scenario serves as a practical illustration of psychologist Morton Deutsch’s influential theory of cooperation and competition, a foundational framework in the field of conflict resolution.

Deutsch’s Theory of Cooperation and Competition

In the 1940s, psychologist Morton Deutsch developed a powerful framework for understanding conflict, centered on the crucial concept of interdependence—how our goals are linked to others. According to Deutsch, the way individuals perceive the relationship between their goals determines whether conflict is approached cooperatively or competitively.

He identified two types of interdependence:

  • Positive: Goals of two people are linked in such a way that the probability of one person’s success in achieving the goal is positively correlated to the attainment of the other person’s goal. In other words, the two people sink or swim together. 
  • Negative: In a negative linkage, if one person wins the other loses. 

These perceptions shape the actions individuals take in conflict situations. Actions can be effective (improving the chances of reaching a goal) or bungling (ineffective or even detrimental, worsening those chances). 

When interdependence and actions interact, they give rise to three important relational dynamics that shape the tone and trajectory of conflict:

  1. Mutual Support (Substitutability): How much one person’s actions help or hinder another. In essence, are you working together or against each other? In a cooperative setting, effective actions by team members support each other as they contribute to a shared outcome. In a competitive setting, a bungling action by one might be helpful to the opponent as they look better in comparison. In the spreadsheet example, if Alex’s late-night edits were useful and if Priya perceived the situation as cooperative, she would see the changes as supportive. 
  2. Openness to Influence (Inducibility): This is the willingness of individuals to listen to and be influenced by one another. When people view each other as partners, they are more likely to adapt their ideas and consider alternative perspectives. In contrast, competitive dynamics create defensiveness and resistance to input. In the spreadsheet conflict, if Priya and Alex trust each other’s intentions, they’ll likely integrate feedback and co-create a better result. If they view each other as rivals, they’ll resist collaboration and retreat to siloed efforts.
  3. Attitudes and Emotions: These are the feelings and judgments people hold about each other—such as trust, respect, suspicion, or resentment. Positive interdependence fosters goodwill, patience, and empathy. Negative interdependence breeds anxiety, frustration, and hostility. Over time, these emotional patterns solidify and influence the workplace culture as a whole.

These dynamics—mutual support, openness to influence, and the feelings between team members—are constantly shifting. They’re deeply influenced by how individuals view their interdependence and the actions they take. Deutsch’s research clearly showed that when people are skilled and their actions are effective, a cooperative approach consistently leads to stronger relationships, greater trust, and ultimately, better outcomes than a competitive one.  

Cooperation vs. Competition in Action

Returning to the example of the spreadsheet, let us consider two potential outcomes—one cooperative, one competitive:

Cooperative Resolution: Alex and Priya, guided by a shared understanding of their mutual goal (a successful business review), approach the situation with curiosity. Priya calmly voiced her concerns, and Alex explained his rationale. They agree to jointly review the document and integrate both sets of inputs. Their actions are effective, attitudes remain positive, and each is open to being influenced by the other’s suggestions. Substitutability is high—they both contribute to the same goal—and the relationship is strengthened. In addition, they set new norms on how to make changes to each others’ sections so as not to create confusion. 

Competitive Breakdown: Priya reacts defensively, assuming Alex is trying to take over the project. Alex feels unappreciated and digs in. Communication becomes guarded, and each begins working on their own version of the report. Substitutability disappears, attitudes harden, and inducibility vanishes. The final presentation is disjointed, and leadership notices the lack of cohesion. The competitive breakdown not only damaged the report but also left lingering resentment between Alex and Priya, impacting future collaborations.

These contrasting outcomes underscore the value of Deutsch’s insights: conflict is not inherently destructive. The determining factor lies in how individuals interpret their interdependence and choose to act.

Strategies for Leaders

Leaders have a critical role to play in shaping the environment that determines whether conflicts become constructive or destructive. Below are three evidence-based strategies drawn from Deutsch’s theory:

1. Reframe Conflicts to Highlight Positive Interdependence Help team members view their goals as interconnected rather than opposed. Facilitate discussions that highlight how each team member’s contribution is essential. In the spreadsheet example, a manager could emphasize that both Sales and Marketing bring vital perspectives to the business review and that their input is complementary.

2. Design Incentives to Reinforce Cooperation Audit reward structures to ensure they do not unintentionally foster competition. Avoid systems where individuals are pitted against one another for limited recognition or rewards. Instead, design performance metrics that reward collaborative outcomes, knowledge sharing, and collective success.

3. Establish Norms and Processes for Constructive Dialogue Promote group norms that encourage respectful disagreement, active listening, and open communication. Use structured meeting formats with clear roles and turn-taking to ensure all voices are heard. Leaders should model openness to influence and reinforce norms that make it safe to express dissent without fear of reprisal.

Conclusion

Morton Deutsch’s work offers a powerful lens through which to understand and transform workplace conflict. By implementing Deutsch’s principles, leaders can transform their workplaces into hubs of collaboration and innovation. In doing so, even the most routine workplace conflicts—like a disagreement over a spreadsheet—can become opportunities for greater trust, innovation, and shared achievement.

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What Niels Bohr Taught Us About Creativity and Leadership

One of the most potent techniques in creative problem solving, and perhaps also the most difficult, is holding two contradictory points of view at the same time. Albert Rothenberg, who extensively studied Nobel Laureates and other eminent people, found that the ability of “actively conceiving multiple opposites or antitheses simultaneously” underlies many creative accomplishments. He coined the term “Janusian” thinking after the Roman god, Janus, who has two faces that look in opposite directions. 

A salient example of Janusian thinking, one that laid the foundation of quantum mechanics, is wave-particle duality. The nature of light had been a topic of vigorous debate because different experiments revealed contradictory aspects. Diffraction indicated a wave like nature while photoelectric effect pointed to its particle characteristic. It took Niels Bohr, Danish physicist and winner of the 1922 Nobel prize in physics, to resolve this apparent contradiction. More than four decades before Rothenberg came up with Janusian thinking, Niels Bohr had arrived at the concept of complementarity during a ski vacation in Norway. The key idea behind complementarity is that objects have certain complementary properties that cannot be observed or measured simultaneously, with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle being the most well known example. So depending on the measurement apparatus, you could either get a wave like behavior or a particle like behavior. Yet, both those behaviors are equally valid and together they provide a fuller picture of reality. 

The true nature of light, according to Bohr, is impossible to visualize because mathematically speaking, it requires more dimensions to represent than the three dimensions of the cartesian world. Even Einstein, who predominantly relied on visualization for his creative breakthroughs, found the juxtaposition of these two conflicting ideas too jarring. Along with Podolsky and Rosen, he offered a rebuttal to the quantum mechanical description but unfortunately it couldn’t stand up to Bohr’s complementarity argument. 

A vital aspect of Janusian thinking, that Bohr brought to light, is the idea of additional dimensions. Imagine you and a friend are looking at a can of soup on a table. Your friend sees the top of the can and insists that the object is circular, while you see the side and believe it’s rectangular. As is obvious, without including the third dimension both of you cannot recognize the object as a cylinder. Finding the hidden dimension or underlying aspect is key to resolving Janusian contradictions. 

One reason why most people find Janusian thinking hard, is that holding two conflicting concepts simultaneously leads to cognitive dissonance. Our brains naturally rush to alleviate the feeling of discomfort that cognitive dissonance brings by resolving the contradiction as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, it often takes the easy way out by “picking a winner” based on an easily available argument instead of trying to view the conflicting ideas as truly complementary and finding hidden factors to resolve contradictions. 

You don’t need to be a nuclear physicist to find Janusian thinking useful. Niels Bohr, who also had strong philosophical leanings, found complementarity to be a foundational aspect of life. Much like yin and yang, he saw complementarity in thoughts and feelings, instinct and reason, and different cultures. Thinking about a feeling makes the feeling disappear, and while thoughts and feelings may not be observable at the same time, they represent valuable facets of human behavior. 

Bohr’s way of thinking is just as valuable in today’s world as it was back then. Here are three ways Janusian thinking can help businesses:

  • Creative Problem Solving: The most obvious area that benefits from Janusian thinking is in creative problem solving. Engineering problems often involve tradeoffs between different factors – improving one lowers another. Janussian thinking can cut through the Gordian knot by solving the problem on a different plane. Creativity expert Michael Mikhalko shares an example from foundries that use sandblasting to clean parts. To clean thoroughly, particles need to be “hard” but hard particles also get stuck and are difficult to remove. So the paradox is that you need something that can be both hard and soft. One clever solution is to use particles of dry ice that are hard enough to clean and then evaporate. In this case, by adding a new dimension of temperature, which transforms the material, the problem gets solved at a completely different level.  
  • Conflict Resolution: Applying Janusian thinking in resolving conflicts aligns naturally with transformational leadership. Leaders routinely face conflicting information – one team believes a particular feature will be a hit with users while the other team feels the exact opposite. Instead of jumping in to make a quick decision, adopting a mindset that both teams have a valid rationale naturally leads you to ask more questions and dig deeper to find underlying factors at play. Once those factors are surfaced, the conversation shifts into a more productive state – the group arrives at a more complete mental model and actively engages in discovering new pathways to make progress.  
  • Building Effective Teams: Bohr believed that different cultures represent a  “harmonious balance of traditional conventions” that reflect the richness of human life. This lesson has even more relevance today when companies have to appeal to global audiences. A travel booking site found that German users were less likely to book compared to Danish people. On investigating further they realized that cultural differences were at play. Germans have a high threshold for uncertainty avoidance compared to their Danish peers, so showing them more details about the trip improved booking rate. Having a more diverse team ensures that decisions in product design are more creative and effective. Leaders who recognize the complementary nature of cultures choose more diverse teams not because there is a mandate to do so, but because it leads to superior results.

Holding two contradictory thoughts in your head is a challenging cognitive process, but it can yield groundbreaking ideas. There are plenty of situations ranging from product design to resolving disagreements where such thinking can lead to new insights. The next time you face a seemingly intractable conflict, apply Janusian thinking to discover a deep insight because as Bohr quipped, “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement, but the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”