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."

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。

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.

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。

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.

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。

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.

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。

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.

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

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.'"

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’。

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.

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。

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.

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。

But companies can actually use a competition to encourage a collaborative environment, says Dick Grote, chairman and CEO of Grote Consulting. Grote has worked with PepsiCo (PEP), and he says management there bases 40% of an employee's annual bonus on how well he or she helps promising colleagues develop their careers at the company. People will collaborate when they're ranked on how well they work with others, Grote says.

格洛特咨询公司（Grote Consulting）董事长迪克·格洛特表示，实际上，公司可以采用竞赛的方式来鼓励人们通力合作。格洛特曾与百事可乐公司合作过。他表示百事可乐公司管理层的做法是，员工的年终奖有40%要取决于他们是否帮助有前途的同事获得良好发展。格洛特称，如果把与同事的合作也作为评价员工的标准，人们就会彼此协作。

Grote claims that one of the benefits of forced ranking and other competitive measures is that it compels managers to actually assess their employees, which many top executives don't do well.

格洛特声称，末位淘汰制和其他竞争性措施的好处之一是，公司管理者们不得不对员工进行评估，而很多高管在这一点上做得并不好

But there are other options. There's nothing that says firms have to be structured to encourage everyone to strive for partner. "In an up–or-out model, the best consultants in the world get pushed out," says Dan Reardon, CEO of global consulting group North Highland.

可选择的方式有很多。企业并不一定都要鼓励员工争当合伙人。全球咨询集团汉彬洲公司（North Highland）首席执行官丹??瑞尔敦称：如果我们实行‘不升职就离职’的模式，可能有些最出色的咨询师会被迫离开。

Reardon's firm takes a different approach, and allows good consultants to keep their jobs as consultants, while other people focus on responsibilities that typically fall to partners, such as sales. Also, Reardon says, all employees, not just partners, have equity in the company. "Part of the core of our culture at North Highland is to have more camaraderie. We want everybody focused on client success, not individual success."

汉彬洲公司的做法是让优秀的咨询师安心做咨询，由其他人担负通常由合伙人承担的销售额等任务。瑞尔敦还表示，公司的所有员工都拥有股权而不仅仅局限于合伙人。同事间拥有更多情谊是我们公司文化核心内容的一部分。我们希望员工们都能关注客户的成功，而不是个人的成功。

Culture is actually the most important factor when considering whether or not to encourage competition. Executives are always looking around for the best practices out there, says Serino, and some could consider forced ranking: "It's easy to become enamored of perceived success, but then when you try to transplant it, it potentially can get botched."

考虑是否要鼓励内部竞争时，文化其实是最重要的因素。塞利诺表示，管理者总是希望能找到最好的经验和方法，有些公司可能会采用末位淘汰制的方法。有些公司采用这种做法获得了成功，但如果希望移植这种做法，则不见得一定会奏效，甚至有可能搞砸。

While there are ways to take the edge off of a business that has a fiercely competitive environment, it's very difficult to turn a company that isn't cutthroat into one that is. And given the benefits many companies are finding from focusing on collaboration, you probably wouldn't want to anyway.

缓解公司激烈的内部竞争有很多办法可循，但是，要把一家公司的内部环境从彼此协作转变为残酷竞争却很难做到。而且，鉴于很多公司都已经从集中力量、通力合作中尝到了甜头，他们不见得会这么干。