Free essay on competition

Competition is said to be a fact of life. Nearly all aspects of life involve competition and the need to outdo the other party whom you are competing with. For employees who compete among each other for job promotions, companies competing for market dominance, school children competing to outshine each other, a group of academic researchers competing for grants, all these aspects give an opportunity for competition to thrive. This sort of competition has over time been associated with sports but from the examples given competition also occurs in various aspects of life. However, in as much as competition has many positives, it also has as many negative attributes to it. When a competition goes over the board in the extent of causing “ bad blood” between the rivalries, then it ceases to become competitive. An example is when an employee A is competing against a fellow employee B for a job promotion, employee A could be needing that promotion so badly that he starts to see his competitor as a hindrance to his career advancement and may be compelled to defame employee B or use “ dirty tricks” on him just to ensure he has an edge over his partner.
Competition can be defined as a situation where the attainment of the goals of the involved parties is negatively linked in that the success of one party depends on the failure of the other. The nature of a competition depends on the relationship the competitors have with each other. An example is where the competition is between two parties familiar to each other; the relationship will be different from a scenario where one is dealing with a stranger. A real life example and that I have experienced personally, is a situation where an investor has put up a hotel along a busy street where other hotels were already in existence, and operating, the previous hotels had knowledge about each other and had developed a stable competition pattern which mutually benefitted them, but the introduction of this new hotel meant that they had to each change their strategy to keep up to the standards of the new hotel, lest they risked losing customers. One of the existing hotels went on to maliciously attack the new hotel citing fault in the safety of their food. That situation made me agree with Alfie Kohn’s argument that competition in its nature is unhealthy.
Competition brings with it positive aspects, when companies compete to dominate a specific market. It works to the benefit of the consumer in that the product will be made available in the market and prices made affordable just to entice more customers to buy products from a particular company. This aspect of the competition is positive, but then a negative aspect can come in, personally I have witnessed a situation where company A spreads false information about the chief executive officer of company B, which is the major competitor saying that the C. E. O is suffering from HIV, hence not fit to run the company. This was all meant to drive customers away from the company in an effort to attract more customers to company A. It becomes unfortunate when competition evolves to foul play and malicious acts to get an edge over your competitor.
Back in junior school, the school head introduced a grouping strategy where students were grouped in classes depending on their performance. Bright students in one class, average students in another and below average put in their own classroom. This kind of seclusion according to individual performance made the below average students feel discriminated against, in the process reducing their self esteem and their desire to study for knowledge and not studying for competitive purposes. This kind of attitude can make those students who perform poorly not to give their best.
Competition has overlooked the very important and underlying objective of the indented outcome. In a personal relationship, competition compels one to go to partner with the prettiest face so as to keep up with or compete among your friends amongst who of you has the prettiest lady. The fact that outer beauty is given preference over the inner beauty in choosing the lady is favored by the nature of competition. Bottom-line is that the canvassing done on competition and its nature by Alfie Kohn has opened my mind to see both the good side of competition and also the dark side of it. Prior to reading his work (Alfie Kohn), I saw competition as this positive entity that favored and strengthened bonds between competitors by the good spirit in any competition which should be based upon, but the ripple effect of the bad side of the competition is also something that should be examined carefully with the ultimate goal of ensuring competition remains a positive aspect and not the negative entity that is sometimes made to be.

Works Cited

Kohn, Alfie. ” Why competion.” (n. d.): 424-428.