Constructing competition for status: sports and higher education

The likelihood and forms of competition for status—or any other good—are dependent on how the good is allocated in society, and such allocation may, in turn, be strongly influenced by organizational efforts. We discuss the ways by which status allocation is organized in the fields of sports and higher education and analyse how and why certain forms of organization aid in constructing competition. Using the case of higher education, we show how actorhood, relationships, and status scarcity have been organized for a specific entity, the university. We argue that desire for status is more difficult to create by organizational efforts, and such desire may be difficult to justify within an organization. We end the chapter by discussing strategies for organizations competing for status and the risks that such strategies involve.

Competition by mutual adjustment

This chapter looks at competition, asking how it comes about and how it develops, with a focus on mutual adjustment. Mutual adjustment covers the social process due to decisions that actors make for themselves and not for others. Though all actual competition involves mutual adjustment, the focus here is on how a state of competition arises as a consequence of actors who mutually adjust to one another. Competition is seen as an unintended consequence created by actors who may have different desires and intentions and who are observing, adjusting, mimicking, and relating in different ways to what others are doing. The chapter analyses the relationship between mutual adjustment and organized competition and offers empirical examples of the state of competition due to mutual adjustment.

Competition as sense making

At the root of the conceptual difficulties in determining the competitive structures that underpin markets is the fact that firms and their product offerings can be described along a large number of attributes, and so be viewed as more or less similar depending on the attributes used for comparison. Our chapter exposes the multi-level cognitive embeddedness of competition among restaurants in New York City. Using field interviews and archival data on restaurant evaluations, categories, pricing, and menus, we employ qualitative counterfactual analysis to address fundamental issues concerning competitive boundaries that cut across categorical, organizational, and transactional perspectives of competition. We argue that conceptualizations of competition are only loosely coupled across different perspectives, and we contend that competitive judgments are better construed as a collective sensemaking process where different actors interact and competitive boundaries are constantly defined, contested, and redefined. Thus, we propose a heuristic framework for understanding the cognitive embeddedness of competition as part of a broader sensemaking perspective of competition.

The organization of competition and non-competition in schools

This chapter explores current ambivalences towards using competition between students as a means to intensify learning. The analysis builds on a case study from a Danish school where games are used to motivate second graders to maximize their learning. The current learning paradigm views the intensity of competition as desirable for motivational purposes. At the same time, the downsides of competition are seemingly avoided because there is no scarcity of prizes and therefore no losers. It becomes an open question whether game-playing is in fact competition or not. Individual students must therefore decide themselves whether competing is the most effective way of sustaining their learning. The analysis concludes that current ambivalences towards competition do not primarily stem from a care for cooperation and community but from a care for the individual’s maximized learning. Theoretically, the chapter introduces the notion of side-glance to understand competition as a form of observation.

Avoiding competition: the effects of rankings in the food waste field

Ranks are often seen as drivers for competition. This chapter critically examines the link between ranks and competition by investigating the actors’ actual desire for the highest positions. Empirically, the author examines the role of the food waste hierarchy in establishing status competition in the food waste field. This discrete ranking creates ‘winners’ at the top (the challengers that prevent food waste by generating demand for it), who respond enthusiastically to the food waste hierarchy to benefit from status gains. In contrast, the ‘losers’ at the bottom (biogas plants) show very little interest in improving their position. They do not see themselves as players in such a competitive game and direct their attention towards other competitions outside the field. The chapter argues that ranks do not necessarily induce competition, since the actors may be involved in multiple competitions and decide whether it is worth pursuing high status within each one.

Reversing competition: the case of corporate governance

This chapter tries to identify the conditions under which a fourth party can tame competition in order to achieve cooperation. It relies on an in-depth case study of a multinational corporation acquired by a private equity firm through leveraged buy-out during the 2000s. It is shown that the private equity firm wanted to foster collaboration among competing operating units to increase firm performance but that it failed, despite the interest of many middle managers. The main reason was that top managers of these operating units, facing the great recession, strategically impeded cooperation because they thought that the private equity firm could break up the corporation in the near future, a belief inscribed in the ‘moral economy’ of managerialism. It is concluded that competition may be more easily reversed in firms with different types of owners or in other sectors where self-interested behaviour is less institutionalized.

A new understanding of competition

Competition is currently found in many, if not most, social domains, such as the economy, politics, public services, sports, culture, higher education, and science. But competition is not endemic to any of these fields. Rather, it has been constructed by those involved or by observers. We ask what competition is and how it can be introduced into a new context. Critically reflecting on insights from economics, management studies and sociology, we define competition as a combined social construction of four factors: actorhood, relationships among actors, scarcity, and desire. We shed light on asymmetric constructions of competition among different actors. Our definition leaves open the effect of competition on behaviour: competition may lead competitors to avoid interaction with each other or to cooperate; it may motivate people to try harder or it may demotivate them. Finally, we discuss issues for further research that follow from our understanding of competition.

The allure of prizes: how contests trap us in competitive relationships

Contests and prizes along with the compulsion to make winners and losers are ubiquitous features of contemporary capitalism in the USA. Combining the anthropological literature on traps and trapping, Simmel’s work on competitive relationships, film criticism, and a rereading of management consulting logic, we develop a theory of prizes as organizers and enforcers of competitive relationships. We argue that contests are traps, funnelling both the wary and unsuspecting into competitive relationships through the lure of material and symbolic rewards. Empirically, our argument proceeds through paired case studies. The first case examines how a straightforward (if technically daunting) educational project designed to teach newcomers the basics of laboratory techniques is transformed into a competitive project when a potential prize is introduced. The second case examines how people spontaneously organize and compete with each other around the promise of an amorphous and fictitious prize during the development of high-speed trading.

Competition and auditing: esteemed but incompatible ideas

The ideas of competition and financial auditing are both socially esteemed and expected to benefit the national economy. Applying a historical perspective, the chapter clarifies how the relationship between the two ideas emerged and developed. Was it possible for financial auditors to simultaneously compete for the appreciation of two stakeholder groups with conflicting interests—client firms and the users of financial statements? It is concluded that combining the idea of competition with that of financial auditing does not elicit the expected benefits of any of the ideas. Auditors, regulators, and academics all relate the idea of competition to economic relationships with client firms, whereas relationships with other stakeholders are observed rhetorically. Yet these stakeholders constitute the very rationale for financial auditing. The compatibility of institutionalized, socially esteemed ideas is ignored even though this goes contrary to the expected benefits of these ideas.

Convincing others that they are competing: the case of schools

The past decades have seen numerous attempts to introduce competition into new sectors of society, but we still know little about the processes by which competition is realized in a new setting. We study three decades of organizational efforts of a Swedish municipality that sought to introduce competition for students among its upper secondary schools following a national reform in the early 1990s. Our study shows that declaring competition was far from sufficient for its realization; the path to competition was lined with hesitation, uncertainty, and a rich variety of organizational challenges to be overcome. One particularly vexing challenge was to convince the principals of the schools that they should view each other as competitors for students. Our findings contribute to previous literature by demonstrating that competition need not be a prerequisite for choice; that several organizers of competition may operate at once; and, more generally, that competition is introduced through stepwise, piecemeal processes.