Competition

For other uses, see Competition (disambiguation), Compete (disambiguation), and Competitor (ship).

"Oneupmanship" redirects here. For Mal Waldron & Steve Lacy album, see One-Upmanship (album).

Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss (an example of which is a zero-sum game).^[1] Competition can arise between entities such as organisms, individuals, economic and social groups, etc. The rivalry can be over attainment of any exclusive goal, including recognition.

Competition in sports. One selection of images showing some of the sporting events that are classed as athletics competitions.

Competition occurs in nature, between living organisms which co-exist in the same environment. Animals compete over water supplies, food, mates, and other biological resources. Humans usually compete for food and mates, though when these needs are met deep rivalries often arise over the pursuit of wealth, power, prestige, and fame when in a static, repetitive, or unchanging environment.^[2] Competition is a major tenet of market economies and business, often associated with business competition as companies are in competition with at least one other firm over the same group of customers. Competition inside a company is usually stimulated with the larger purpose of meeting and reaching higher quality of services or improved products that the company may produce or develop.

Competition is often considered to be the opposite of cooperation; however, in the real world, mixtures of cooperation and competition are the norm.^[3] In economies, as the philosopher R. G. Collingwood argued "the presence of these two opposites together is essential to an economic system. The parties to an economic action co-operate in competing, like two chess players".^[4] Optimal strategies to achieve goals are studied in the branch of mathematics known as game theory.

Competition has been studied in several fields, including psychology, sociology and anthropology. Social psychologists, for instance, study the nature of competition. They investigate the natural urge of competition and its circumstances. They also study group dynamics, to detect how competition emerges and what its effects are. Sociologists, meanwhile, study the effects of competition on society as a whole. Additionally, anthropologists study the history and prehistory of competition in various cultures. They also investigate how competition manifested itself in various cultural settings in the past, and how competition has developed over time.

Biology and ecology

Main article: Competition (biology)

Competition within, between, and among species is one of the most important forces in biology, especially in the field of ecology.^[5]

Competition between members of a species ("intraspecific") for resources such as food, water, territory, and sunlight may result in an increase in the frequency of a variant of the species best suited for survival and reproduction until its fixation within a population. However, competition among resources also has a strong tendency for diversification between members of the same species, resulting in coexistence of competitive and non-competitive strategies or cycles between low and high competitiveness. Third parties within a species often favour highly competitive strategies leading to species extinction when environmental conditions are harsh (evolutionary suicide).^[6]

Competition is also present between species ("interspecific"). When resources are limited, several species may depend on these resources. Thus, each of the species competes with the others to gain access to the resources. As a result, species less suited to compete for the resources may die out unless they adapt by character dislocation, for instance. According to evolutionary theory, this competition within and between species for resources plays a significant role in natural selection. At shorter time scales, competition is also one of the most important factors controlling diversity in ecological communities, but at larger scales expansion and contraction of ecological space is a much larger factor than competition.^[7] This is illustrated by living plant communities where asymmetric competition and competitive dominance frequently occur.^[5] Multiple examples of symmetric and asymmetric competition also exist for animals.^[8]

Consumer competitions – games of luck or skill

Further information: Game of chance

In Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, competitions or lotto are the equivalent of what are commonly known as sweepstakes in the United States. The correct technical name for Australian consumer competitions is a trade promotion lottery or lotto.^[9]

People that enjoy entering competitions are known as compers.^[10][11]

Competitiveness

Many philosophers and psychologists have identified a trait in most living organisms which can drive the particular organism to compete. This trait, called competitiveness, is viewed as having a high adaptive value, which coexists along with the urge for survival.^[2] Competitiveness, or the inclination to compete, though, has become synonymous with aggressiveness and ambition in the English language. More advanced civilizations integrate aggressiveness and competitiveness into their interactions, as a way to distribute resources and adapt. Many plants compete with neighboring ones for sunlight.

The term also applies to econometrics. Here, it is a comparative measure of the ability and performance of a firm or sub-sector to sell and produce/supply goods and/or services in a given market. The two academic bodies of thought on the assessment of competitiveness are the Structure Conduct Performance Paradigm and the more contemporary New Empirical Industrial Organisation model. Predicting changes in the competitiveness of business sectors is becoming an integral and explicit step in public policymaking. Within capitalist economic systems, the drive of enterprises is to maintain and improve their own competitiveness.

One-upmanship, also called "one-upsmanship",^[12] is the art or practice of successively outdoing a competitor. The term was first used in the title of a book by Stephen Potter, published in 1952^[13] as a follow-up to The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship (or the Art of Winning Games without Actually Cheating) (1947), and Lifemanship titles in his series of tongue-in-cheek self-help books, and film and television derivatives, that teach various ploys to achieve this. This comic satire of self-help style guides manipulates traditional British conventions for the gamester, all life being a game, who understands that if you're not one-up, you're one-down. Potter's unprincipled principles apply to almost any possession, experience or situation, deriving maximum undeserved rewards and discomfitting the opposition. The 1960 film School for Scoundrels and its 2006 remake were satiric portrayals of how to use Potter's ideas.

In that context, the term refers to a satiric course in the gambits required for the systematic and conscious practice of "creative intimidation", making one's associates feel inferior and thereby gaining the status of being "one-up" on them. Viewed seriously, it is a phenomenon of group dynamics that can have significant effects in the management field: for instance, manifesting in office politics.^[14]

See also

• Academic achievement
• Arms race
• Brinkmanship
• Competition
• Conflict theories
• Dozens (game)
• Economic mobility
• Free market
• Gaming the system
• Identity performance
• Opportunism
• Security dilemma
• Social mobility
• Winning streak