Competition

In one line

Competition is the impersonal struggle of people for something scarce, in which each is trying to get the thing rather than to defeat anybody.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: competition is the dissociative social process in which two or more persons or groups strive for the same scarce object, reward or position, according to accepted rules, and in which attention is directed at the object rather than at the rival. Park and Burgess described it as the most elementary and universal form of social interaction, and as interaction without social contact, meaning that competitors need not be aware of one another at all.

Its characteristics

1. It arises from scarcity. Where there is enough for everyone there is no competition. This is the single most important point, because it means competition is a consequence of the supply, not of human nature.
2. It is impersonal. The competitor's object is the prize, not the injury of the rival. Two candidates for one post compete without hostility; the moment it becomes personal it is conflict.
3. It is unconscious in many cases. Competitors frequently do not know who else is competing, which is why Park called it interaction without social contact.
4. It is continuous, not episodic. Conflict ends; competition runs on.
5. It is governed by rules, formal or customary. Competition that abandons the rules becomes conflict.
6. It is universal, found in every society.
7. It is a cause of social change, because it forces adaptation.

Its types

By the object competed for.

• Economic: for jobs, custom, markets, land, wages. The commonest and the most studied.
• Cultural: between cultures, languages, religions and ways of life for adherents and for prestige.
• Social: for status, prestige and recognition.
• Political: for office and power.
• Racial or ethnic: between groups so defined for resources and standing.

By its manner.

• Personal competition, where the competitors know one another and the rivalry is direct, which lies at the border with conflict.
• Impersonal competition, where they do not, which is the pure form.

Its positive functions

1. Allocation. It distributes scarce positions and rewards, and where the rules are fair it distributes them by merit.
2. Motivation and effort. It stimulates people to develop and use their capacities.
3. Efficiency and innovation, because a competitor who does not improve loses.
4. It assigns people to roles suited to them, or is supposed to.
5. It prevents monopoly and stagnation.
6. It produces social change, by forcing adaptation.

Its dysfunctions

1. Insecurity and anxiety, which are a permanent cost of a competitive order.
2. It can become conflict when it is personalised or when the rules break down.
3. Monopoly. Successful competitors eliminate competition, which is why competition law exists at all.
4. It reproduces inequality. The starting positions are unequal, so competition rewards advantage as well as merit, which is the criticism in [Social Stratification] of the Davis and Moore argument.
5. Wasteful duplication of effort.
6. It weakens solidarity and can dissolve primary relations if it enters them.