> Kohn argues that competition in the workplace is not productive and does not lead to increased efficiencies as is generally believed. He suggests that competition exists as individuals compete for better pay, better titles, better parking places, increased recognition, better offices, and so forth. He argues that rewards such as increased pay are actually counterproductive, although he does not go into details much in this work (Kohn, 1992).
Perhaps the most interesting argument that Kohn puts forth in the workplace competitive environment is that competition does not yield productive results, but in fact, results in inefficiencies and duplication of effort. It is not difficult to see how he arrives at this conclusion. In a competitive environment, one person succeeds when another person fails, or at least achieves less. Information becomes a valuable commodity, and thus the system rewards those who hoard information by making it more difficult for those around them to perform their jobs. Instead of one person discovering something and sharing it with the rest of the group, each member of the group must discover it. This is inefficient and leads to duplication of effort. Kohn even describes an office scenario where an office whose agents who competed against each other performed less well than an office whose agents co-operated and shared information (Kohn, 1992).
In school, competition can range from simple competitive games played at the elementary school level to the grade curves of college. In some cases, competition is used by teachers to create an interesting learning environment and hold the attention of students, but students who do not perform well in situations of competition are less likely to remain attentive. Competit
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