Conflict management: do individual rankings undermine the cooperation managers ask for?
A manager may ask people to share information while rewarding each person's relative performance. The management question is specific: before addressing a conflict between colleagues, should we check whether the appraisal system makes cooperation costly?
What the literature establishes
Morton Deutsch (1949, Human Relations) proposes a foundational distinction between cooperative and competitive interdependence: in the former, participants' goals are positively linked; in the latter, one person's success compromises another's. This theoretical framework encourages us to examine the rules governing relationships rather than reducing tensions to individual personalities. A ranking becomes relevant to this analysis when it determines a reward or recognition that cannot be granted to everyone.
Two mechanisms behind competition
Kou Murayama and Andrew J. Elliot (2012, Psychological Bulletin) show, through a meta-analysis and a model test, that the relationship between competition and performance involves opposing mechanisms. Competition can foster performance-approach goals, but also performance-avoidance goals, which relate differently to outcomes. This research concerns performance rather than conflict resolution directly: above all, it cautions against assuming that competition has a uniformly beneficial effect.
The premature conclusion
It would be tempting to conclude that all individual comparisons should be abolished. These works support neither that general prescription nor the conclusion that a ranking necessarily causes conflict. The useful distinction is between an informative comparison and a rule that turns helping a colleague into a disadvantage for one's own appraisal. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence does not settle
A theoretical framework and a synthesis of performance research do not demonstrate that changing bonuses will resolve a particular conflict. Observed practices also depend on responsibilities, compliance requirements and prior relationships. Conversely, an intervention focused solely on communication may leave untouched a rule that penalises the very cooperative behaviour being requested.
A practical check in Lugano
In Lugano, SHR's conflict management programme can provide a framework for a check within a bank, a fashion or trading business, or an Italian-speaking family SME: compare an actual request for cooperation with the written appraisal criteria. For four weeks, record each request for a case handover or support between colleagues, whether it was fulfilled, and how commercial or operational credit was allocated, without recording client data. Then calculate the proportion of requests fulfilled and identify cases where helping reduced the credit awarded to the contributor. If a contradiction emerges, clarify one allocation rule and repeat the observation: the change will be locally verifiable, without constituting causal proof on its own. To go further: explore the Conflict Management training in Lugano in the canton of Ticino, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Conflict Management in Lugano
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