Your manager believes that competition between different parts of your organization makes people work harder...

While competition is “the American Way," within an organization competition is a hindrance to quality improvement – it stifles communication and creates barriers between functions. Cooperation is required to improve quality and to implement quality management. Cooperation leads to increased creativity, reduces fear of censure, and helps the development of a better sense of belonging and acceptance. These are all characteristics of high-quality organizations.

Teamwork, one of the cornerstones of quality management, is based on cooperation. To facilitate cooperation, the organization needs to focus on teams doing well, allow ample time for teams to operate and achieve improvements, use the language of quality management, practice reciprocity, share information, and act cooperatively.