„‚ CONDITIONS THAT HINDER EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

a remote outpost or office location, repeatedly embarrassed, publicly rebuked, treated
with disrespect, or avoided as a pariah.
There are elements of conflict in almost all situations. Conflict is a part of human
society because of the kind of phenomenon that society is. There is no social mind, only
the minds of individual human beings. There are no social goals, only the goals of
individual people filling positions of different importance and worth. Agreement among
individual minds thrives best where there is a clear and present external danger—when
the group’s common goals for survival are pitted against the common goals of another
group (Davis, 1949). Indeed, a high degree of internal integration seems to be a function
of an external threat (as President Franklin D. Roosevelt was so consciously aware when
he virtually waited for the Pearl Harbor attack in order to solidify the American people
and attain a consensus on a declaration of war).
Competition-Rivalry
In contrast to conflict, which aims to destroy the opponent or at the very least remove
him or her from the field of action, competition simply aims to better the opponent in
achieving some mutually desired goal. Competition implies that there are normative
rules applicable to the interaction to which the opponents must conform and that behind
these norms (or perhaps embedded in them, justifying and maintaining them) is a
common set of values superior to the competitive interests. It also implies a total
absence of coercion. Usually, the norms dictate that the goals of the opponents must be
obtained by methods other than fraud or physical force. If competition exceeds the
norms, it transforms itself into conflict. Thus, there is no such phenomenon as
“unrestricted competition,” for this would be a contradiction in terms: Competition is
always limited (Davis, 1949).
Competition has both an ecological and social dimension, as was previously
discussed. Competition is a form of interaction that need not involve direct social
contact; it may be ecological, impersonal, and “unconscious.” For example, cotton
farmers in the Mississippi delta of the United States compete with cotton growers in
Egypt; but they may be unaware of one another. When groups become socially aware
that they are in competition, they are rivals. Rivalry is thus a form of conscious
competition in which the interaction is social and direct, with mutual awareness and use
made of rational strategies and tactics. When the clash between opponents is so keen
that they seek to destroy each other, competition becomes conflict. Competition can
arouse intense feelings; and, as a result, the rules governing competitive and rivalrous
interaction may be abandoned (Broom & Selznick, 1958).
Competition is an extremely dynamic form of interaction because it stimulates
achievement by throwing many domains open to rewards and penalties, by lifting
people’s levels of aspiration through the freedom to compete, by threatening failure and
insecurity as well as success and security, and by adding the element of rivalry.
Competition thus creates a particularly important motivational context for changing
complex urban-industrial societies. However, nowhere do people submit themselves to
The Pfeiffer Library Volume 6, 2nd Edition. Copyright ©1998 Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer ❚❘ 379