窝里斗值不值得提倡？

    管理咨询师绝对不会建议公司进一步激化内部已然残酷而激烈的内部竞争。他们绝不会这么说：“知道我们要怎么做吗？我们得让员工心生恐惧、勾心斗角。”

    管理专家和明智的首席执行官都会选择协作，而非竞争。康奈尔大学工业及劳工关系学院（Human Capital Development at Cornell's Industrial and Labor Relations School）人力资本开发执行主任迈克尔•塞利诺称：“从根本上而言，协作是最佳的管理方式。”不论是否果真如此，而今大多数商界人士都认为，通力协作能带来更好的结果。

    然而，一些财富500强公司却在培养竞争性的内部环境。咨询公司和律师事务所在这方面比较典型。他们的晋升模式是“不升职就离职”。每个人都想成为合伙人，到了一定的阶段，要么如愿以偿，获得众人梦寐以求的合伙人地位，要么公司就会鼓励他们另谋高就。

    以高盛公司（Goldman Sachs）为例。每隔几年，公司都会提升大约一百位员工成为合伙人。成为合伙人意义重大，他们的薪水和公司股权都会大幅增加。但公司35,000名员工中总计只有不到500名合伙人。员工在晋升阶梯上会被逐步淘汰。此外，即使员工已经做到了最高的合伙人职位，也有可能被撤销职位，当然这种情况比较少见。

    其他公司采取的一些用人措施可能会激发企业内部的竞争。众所周知，通用电气（GE）前任首席执行官杰克•韦尔奇大力支持“末位淘汰制”。通用电气的高管根据业绩对员工进行排名，一般来说，垫底的10%必须走人。百事可乐公司（PepsiCo）的员工流动率也相当高。怀亚特•杰婓高管猎头公司（Wyatt & Jaffe）总裁马克•杰婓称：“这些方法对他们来说似乎同样奏效。”他还表示，能够顺利通过排名考验的员工在今后跳槽时也会因此而增加求职的砝码。

    这能降低“不升职就离职”的负面影响，比如员工不会再那么担忧失去工作了。塞利诺称：“麦肯锡咨询公司（McKinsey）就是‘不升职就离职’的典型，但‘离职’也并非一定是坏事。”辞职的员工常常能在其他公司寻得满意职位。他补充说：“公司每个人都对这个游戏规则心知肚明。不论是‘不升职就离职’，还是末位淘汰制，核心就是‘加油、加油、加油’。”

    然而，竞争性环境也存在着负面影响。塞利诺表示，如果员工感受到内部竞争的压力，他们会把宝贵的时间和精力用于琢磨如何抢同事风头，而不是努力思考如何把工作干好。

    同样，有明显的证据表明，如果一些员工得知公司对他们进行排名，他们的业绩表现会更差。沃顿商学院（Wharton）教授伊万•巴兰吉在亚马逊（Amazon）旗下的服务网站、机械土耳其人（Mechanical Turk）公司中随机抽取了一组员工进行对照研究。他发现，如果参与者知道公司对自己进行业绩排名，他们的效率会比那些不知情的参与者更低。如果人们发现自己排名比同事还低，那就更是如此。这种信息并未激发他们的积极性，而是促使他们选择离开。

    You would never hear a management consultant advise a company to create a more cutthroat environment. "You know what we need here? Fear. More backstabbing."

    No, collaboration seems to be the word of choice for management experts and informed CEOs alike. "Collaboration is fundamentally the best approach towards management," says Michael Serino, executive director of Human Capital Development at Cornell's Industrial and Labor Relations School. Whether it's accurate or not, most people in business today tend to believe that collaborative work delivers better results.

    And yet, several Fortune 500 companies foster competitive internal environments. Consulting companies and law firms are famous for this. They tend to have an "up or out" promotion model -- everybody wants to make partner, and after a certain point, people either move up to those coveted positions or they are encouraged to find employment elsewhere.

    Take Goldman Sachs (GS). Every couple of years, the company promotes roughly a hundred employees to partner. It's a big deal -- those select few receive a significant raise in salary and equity in the company. But there are fewer than 500 partners out of 35,000 employees at the firm. People are weeded out on the way up, and though it's rare, they can even get de-partnered once they reach the top.

    Other companies have implemented hiring practices that would seem to spur internal competition. Former GE CEO Jack Welch was known for championing a "forced ranking" system. Top GE (GE) executives would rank employees by performance, and they generally let the bottom 10% go. PepsiCo is also known for having a high churn rate among employees. "It seems to work for them," says Mark Jaffe, president of executive search firm Wyatt & Jaffe, adding that the people who survive the system carry that cachet with them when they look for other jobs.

    That can help mitigate the negative effects of an up-or-out model, such as having your staff feel terrified of losing their jobs. "If you think about McKinsey, it has always been an example of 'up or out,' but 'out' is not such a bad place," Serino says. People who leave often get good offers elsewhere. He adds, "The rules of the game are very clear to everybody coming in. It's up or out, ranked performance, it's, 'go go go.'"

    Still, there is a down side to the competitive environment. For one, employees who feel pitted against one another can devote valuable time and energy trying to figure out how to outshine their peers, instead of trying to figure out how to best contribute to projects, says Serino.

    Also, there's strong evidence that some employees perform worse just knowing they're going to be ranked. In a controlled study of a randomized group of employees at Amazon's crowd-sourcing website Mechanical Turk, Wharton professor Iwan Barankay found that participants who knew they were ranked were generally less productive than those who didn't, and that's especially true for people who found out that they performed worse than their peers. The news didn't motivate them, they just checked out.