Collaboration
Chapter 3 - Experiential Growth Method® - Deeper dive
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Welcome to the Collaboration page
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What is Collaboration?
Collaboration is a joint effort of multiple individuals or work groups to accomplish a task or project. Within an organisation, collaboration typically involves the ability of two or more people to contribute to creating value. In the enterprise, the ability to collaborate (and communicate) is increasingly becoming essential to business applications. Enterprise collaboration may encompass the use of a collaboration platform, enterprise social networking tools, a corporate intranet and the public Internet.
- Synchronous collaboration, known as real-time collaboration, involves collaborative partners working together simultaneously and in communication as they work.
- Collaboration may be asynchronous, in which case those collaborating are not necessarily communicating and working together at the same time.
- Contextual collaboration involves embedding business applications, such as word processors, shared calendars and other software into a unified user interface that uses presence technology to enhance collaboration. That approach allows people to communicate and instantly share any resources at their disposal from within any of the applications. The purpose is to make online collaboration as simple and intuitive as working with people in the same room, while enabling that capacity between people anywhere in the world.
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Thinking about the concept
A visual thesaurus search is always an excellent starting point to discuss a concept definition:
| COLLABORATION |
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| https://www.freethesaurus.com/collaboration |
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Relations of Collaboration within Organisational futuring (and Corporate futuring)
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There exists a close vertical relationship within Organisational futuring:
- Outer focus: Requisite organisation
- Other focus: Learning organisation
- Inner focus: Collaboration
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On the Inner focus level, a close relationship exists with:
- Managing
- Governance
- Motivation
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Corporate futuring and Organisational futuring intertwine, on the Inner focus level, through:
- Long term thinking
- Supporting
- Steering
- Appreciation
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In concrete terms, this means:
- The trio - 'Collaboration', 'Learning organiation' and 'Requisite organisation' - is inextricably linked.
- Your 'Collaboration' contributes substantially to 'Managing', 'Governance' and 'Motivation'.
- Furthermore, 'Collaboration' is part of the Inner focus level where 'Organisational-' and 'Corporate futuring' meet.
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Questions we can ask ourselves when contemplating Collaboration
- Supports our 'Collaboration', our 'Managing' our 'Governance' and our 'Motivation'?
- Is our 'Collaboration' robust enough to generate a vialble 'Learning organisation'?
- Is our 'Collaboration' keen enough to maintain our 'Long term thinking' and 'Support'?
- Is our 'Collaboration' a collider or a mediator between our 'Motivation' and 'Managing'?
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Deep Dive
- Cooperative behavior, from helping others to paying taxes, is essential for a well-functioning society
- Unfortunately, if you are too cooperative, you can be exploited by others
Humans have achieved impressive levels of cooperation. From getting together to hunt down animals much larger than ourselves to building massive infrastructures, examples of successful cooperation are everywhere. The history of human progress is the history of cooperation!
In a study published a few years ago (Alós-Ferrer and Garagnani 2020), we measured the prosociality of people. Broadly speaking, that means how much you care about the welfare of others compared to your own. We also let the same people play a public good game under time pressure, but using a method that ensured even fast people would be under pressure. The result was that cooperation was more intuitive for more prosocial people, but free-riding was more intuitive for less prosocial people.
This means that some people are intuitively cooperative, and some people are not. Especially for cooperation in groups, there might be many of the latter. For example, other studies have shown that many people might be generous toward others but selfish toward groups.
It also means that cooperation is not ingrained. We are probably not born with a cooperative or noncooperative attitude. For humans, intuition is not only about the deep-rooted behaviors we are born with. We train our intuition over our lives (so driving a car can become quite intuitive), and what becomes intuitive depends on your social environment, your culture, and your personal experiences.
We would all be better off if we were all extremely cooperative (as in the public good game). But that is not going to happen. There will always be some free riders: the temptation is too strong. And, if you are a natural cooperator, they will take advantage of you.
We should not expect cooperation in groups to happen spontaneously, or be outraged when it does not. That is, after all, why we have tax laws instead of voluntary contributions, and why our politicians fight about how high those taxes should be. And maybe it is not so bad that cooperation does not happen naturally all the time. An example of cooperation in markets is when firms agree to raise their prices to jointly increase their profits instead of competing with each other. This is called collusion, and it is illegal in most countries because it harms consumers. Likewise, cooperation among criminals (“don’t talk to the police!”) hurts law-abiding citizens.
So, are you a cooperator?
- If your answer is “yes,” you will be taken advantage of, and you might harm others if you cooperate with the wrong people.
- If your answer is “no,” you might be taking advantage of others and preventing groups from profiting from joint opportunities.
- Your answer should probably be, “It depends.” Fortunately, real life is less extreme than a public good game, and offers you plenty of opportunities to build trust with others and decide when to cooperate and when to be wary and protect yourself.
| Content source |
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| Carlos Alós-Ferrer Ph.D. - Psychology today - 2024 |
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