A review of strategic theory from the point of communication, the need to live with the states of cooperation and competition is discussed.
Finally, some guides on the contribution of communication in strategic thinking are delivered.
Introduction - Strategy: The concept.
To speak of strategy is to speak of years of history, it is to speak of a concept closely associated in its beginnings with warfare, the success of war and military leadership.
Talking about strategy, however, is talking about a concept that takes new routes every day, about a word that has changed its connotations and has transcended different disciplines. (Pérez, 2001).
The term strategy, which in its beginning was born to defeat an enemy in war and win battles, today is often used to refer to cooperative concepts, to generate alliances or conquer love (Pérez, 2001). It is precisely in this change in which we place this reflection, in the semantic turn of the concept of strategy, in the incorporation of the theories of consensus and of the concept of cooperation, without abandoning the foundational ideas of competition and struggle, all this enlightened (or trying, humbly, to illuminate) from the transdisciplinary perspective of communication.
Management and marketing theories, which filled their books with words and concepts such as target, marketing war, guerrilla strategy, aligning troops and others from the military field, are beginning to incorporate concepts such as bonding, complementary, strategic alliances, social responsibility (CSR), associated employees, and others more or less related to more cooperative themes (Kaczmarski and Cooperrider, 1997).
While this might sound like one more fashion in the business world (and perhaps it is), I think that this small change in business language is slowly leading us to a trend in which communication scientists can be a great contribution, not only at the final point of the strategy, if not in the conception of it.
On cooperation and competition
It seems to me that the need for cooperation and work with others is implicit in the human being and therefore in the foundations of our societies, it is at the beginning of the language that we can begin to coordinate with others (Maturana, 2002), and build big cities, monuments, establish rules, create companies and thereby generate culture and society. It is in this capacity to speak and therefore to coordinate with others to my understanding, that this is the creative force of the Human Being, for this reason every strategy must consider cooperation as one of its fundamental elements.
An example of this is the economy, which historically focused on struggle and competition, but which has concepts of cooperation and trust at its foundations, without cooperation we could not have agreed on the rules of the economic game and without Trust it would be inconceivable that practically all of our assets were entrusted to a banking institution whose owners and workers we hardly know.
The dilemma of confrontation or cooperation in strategy is found developed in the works of game theorywhere the distinction is made between zero-sum games - those in which the players have totally opposite objectives and the results of one player are inversely proportional to that of the other - and non-zero-sum games, where “all the players they have the opportunity to obtain favorable results by negotiating skillfully with the other players, so that no one loses and everyone can make an acceptable profit. ” (Pérez, 2005, pp105)
The problem in my opinion becomes more complex, since I believe that in social situations there are always zero-sum games and games with non-zero sum in the same situation.
For example let's imagine a chess match (generally classified as a zero-sum game) between two friends, the game itself could be said to be zero-sum, however the two friends would be having a good time (or at least that's the objective) with which the final result of the game will not be equal to zero, since in addition to the captured pieces and the checkmate on the part of one or the other, both have gained a while of recreation.
As in the previous example, I think most human relationships are a mix of zero-sum and non-zero-sum games, although clearly one or the other predominates in some situations.
It is the strategist's job to understand which part of the game is zero sum and which is not, and which players to collaborate or compete with.
However, I also believe that this is not always understood this way by the players, often conceiving strategies that seek a zero-sum only result, but "playing a non-cooperative version of a zero-sum game usually leads to undesirable results" (Pérez, 2005, pp: 105) leading players to what I would call a less than zero sum game.
Imagine this time a soccer game, the confrontational dimension of the game would be the game itself and the coordination dimension would be the legal arrangements for television, the tickets, and the rules of the game.
If both teams played looking for a result equal to zero, it is very possible that they will not reach commercial agreements, both losing that income opportunity, and if they entered the court without respecting the coordination present in the rules of the game, it is most likely that both teams would come out with some expulsion or injured, this is how in the calculation of the result the winning team must not only include the points obtained by goals but must also subtract the lost players, for its part the losing team should subtract the goals against and their own lost players, with this it is most likely that the result of the sum of both teams of less than zero.
A situation where this occurs frequently is war, since however much the desired objective is achieved, human and economic casualties generally give a negative balance when adding the gains and losses of both parties. However, the human need for coordination and cooperation is manifested even in such an extreme situation as fighting. In the trench warfare of the First World War, enemy soldiers developed a system that has been called “live and let live”, in the that they intentionally failed in their attacks in exchange for equal behavior on the part of the enemy (Axelrod, 1986). In Chile, the film “My Best Enemy” also shows an example of spontaneous cooperation in times of war.
I have already said that I consider that confrontation and collaboration coexist in social phenomena, but I want to reaffirm that I do not leave out conflict and competition, I believe that they are an important part of human development, as long as it is understood that this competition is associated with a mutual collaboration. In a shopping center for example, the different stores collaborate to bring more customers and at the same time compete with each other, and in turn it is the concentration of competition in the same place that attracts the largest audience (who may decide to buy once there)
The internal organization of companies is another perfect example for the confrontation-cooperation dialogue, the worker who wants to move up the organizational scale is in competition with his coworkers, but paradoxically, it will be the one who achieves greater cooperation from his colleagues who achieves best results.
About collaboration, strategy and company
Marketing and management theorists are recognizing the importance of cooperation.
Arnoldo Hax and Dean Wilde, for example, in what they called the Delta Project (2001), have raised the need to vary Porter's matrix, incorporating the concept of "complementary" and focusing more on the attractiveness of the market to the possibility of generating a bonding with the client, than in the intensity of rivalry with the competition.
To achieve this bonding, companies must fully understand their market and form strategic ties with complementary companies, clients and any organization that may collaborate in their value chain.
Although not all companies consciously work with strategies like the Delta Project or the like, they all work with some degree of cooperation, be it with suppliers, the state or the workers themselves. And all must conceive their strategies taking into account this quality.
On communication and strategy
We have affirmed that collaboration is a fundamental part of social systems and therefore a fundamental part of strategy, and we understand that the only way to generate collaboration is through the coordination that communication gives us, “human beings exist in the language, which is the space of coordinations of consensual behavioral coordinations in which we move ”Maturana, 2002. Pp: 35). Therefore, communication is a fundamental part of developing strategies and not just a tool for it.
In this light and by way of conclusion, I want to present some points in which, it seems to me, communication is presented as one of the pillars of the strategy:
- In formulating the strategy, communication should give us clues to the behavior of the other players.
Just as statistical - probabilistic theories tried to analyze the possibilities of one action or another, communication should provide us with a reading of the possible decisions of the other players, either through the interpretation of their texts or their qualitative knowledge..
- In collaboration between organizations or people, communication must translate the different understandings of the world, be the bridge between different organizational cultures.
- All action is communicative and all communication is action, so the strategy must take into account the communicative qualities of its actions and tactics (and of the strategy itself), not just those that commonly subscribe to the communication domain.
Finally and to close, it seems to me that the people who work with communication have a double mission:
On the one hand, continue developing communication as an operational tool of the strategy, taking the concepts implicit in it to different audiences. And on the other, introducing communication in the high decision spheres (organizational, political or social), developing strategies from communication and providing years of theory and practice. After all, the communication and the “games” in which the strategies are applied are very similar to each other, both occur in a relationship (between players), a situation and a specific context.
Bibliography
Axelrod (198) The Evolution of Cooperation. University Alliance.
Hax and Wilde (2001) The Delta Model - Discovering New Sources of Profitability in a Networked Economy, European Management Journal, Vol 19, No. 4, pp: 379–391
Kaczmarski and Cooperrider (1997) Constructionist leadership in the global relational age. Organization & Environment, Vol 10, No. 3, pp: 235-158
Maturana (2002, Eleventh Edition) El Sentido de lo Humano. Dolmen Ensayo
Perez, (2001) Communication Strategies. Ariel Communication
Notes
Mainly John Von Neumman (1903-1957)
I use the concept only for reflection and to exemplify a negative result for both parties, assuming the methodological lack that implies.
We could interpret bonding as "emotional bond".
I am thinking, for example, of studies closer to anthropology.
