It is about making coalitions. In organizations with limited resources, members (and most living creatures) fight for the limited resources. It can be a fight for desired position or a fight for the attention of decision makers. These fights have many strategies and paths. One of the most common behavior is creating coalitions to fight for the limited resources . It can take the form of bad-name gossiping, that makes people disassociated from the "bad guys in the other coalition. It can take the form of praising your allies and denouncing the work of your rivals. People will get into coalitions, when one coalition sabotages the work of another coalition.
In an organization which gives individuals the power to decide about resource allocation to other members of the organization, the allocators can use their power to be "important", and thus make other people cooperate with them.
Coalitions will be created around powers everybody can give to the coalition. People with low resources (decision making or other important resources to the coalition) will not be important to the head/s of the coalition.
People will envy people who they think got more then they deserve. People many times will over-estimate themselves (especially conservatives) and underestimate others.
Solutions
The solutions to a rivalry in organization can be:
- cultivating a spirit of mutual dependence and mutual goal. Everybody has a role, mixture of flavors.
- creating a decision system in which every-body relay on every-body else (could not work), or a just system of decision making (and of course cost-effective), and good spirit.
- Promoting a just system of reward and recognition.
For other solution see Principles for Effective Partnerships in Salford