Book Review: Thomas Klikauer reviews Evolution,Altruism,and Human Behavior,SuperCooperators–Evolution,Altruism,and Human Behavior,by Martin Nowak and Roger Highfield

Two of the most often rehearsed assumptions of managerial ideology are ‘competition is good’ as the foundation of all management decision-making and behaviour (cf. Porter’s Competitive Advantage, 2004/1985) and the infamous ‘survival of the fittest’ that underlines, for example, many management strategies. Management studies have always looked at other fields in order to improve its activities. Economics and human science are no exceptions. Support for the two managerial assumptions comes, for example, from neo-liberal economics while sociological-theoretical backing has been supplied by rational choice theory and in particular the renowned ‘prisoner dilemma’. Nowak and Highfield’s book is not a management book. Despite this or perhaps because of this, it challenges both assumptions by arguing that it is not so much competition that drives human behaviour and success but cooperation.

For both authors, management’s emphasis on competition contradicts the four billion year history of the earth, animal existence and human life. All of that has been possible through cooperation. Cooperation is also one of the key founding blocks in evolutionary mathematics that has delivered numerical proof in favour of cooperation. Martin Nowak is a Harvard Professor in this field while Roger Highfield is editor of the world’s bestselling science magazine New Scientist. Both note,

human society fizzes with cooperation. Even the simplest things that we do involve more cooperation than you might think. Consider, for example, stopping at a coffee shop one morning to have a cappuccino and croissant for breakfast. To enjoy that simple pleasure could draw on the labours of a small army of people from at least half a dozen countries. (p. xii)

In other words, your breakfast has been made possible through a tremendous network of interlinking forms of cooperation ranging from a farmer to a waitress serving your coffee. All of whom are unlikely to engage in a daily struggle for ‘the survival of the fittest’. Nowak and Highfield emphasize ‘the catchy term “survival of the fittest” was coined in 1864 by the philosopher Herbert Spencer, a champion of the free market, and this signalled the introduction of Darwinian thinking into the political arena’ (p. 14). Falsely associated with Charles Darwin, managerial ideology thrives on a falsehood that never existed. Nowhere in Darwin’s books appears the term ‘survival of the fittest’. Perhaps it is a case of ‘never let the facts get into the way of a managerial ideology’.

But the core of Nowak and Highfield’s book is not dedicated to myth-busting and the elimination of ideologies in favour of scientific facts. Instead, their work challenges many theoretical assumptions enshrined in the Rand Corporation’s ‘Prisoner Dilemma’. Nowak and Highfield outline the shortcomings of the prisoner dilemma that has been so widely applied in management, management studies, managerial decision-making and management strategy. Their challenge to the prisoner dilemma comes from two basic angles: firstly, the prisoner dilemma works best with a very limited range of people (2–3): ‘confess, dob-in your mate, and you will get off lightly!’ (cf. Sophie’s Choice). In sharp contrast to the prisoner dilemma, neither human evolution nor management operates with such a limited range of participants. Secondly, the prisoner dilemma is a ‘one-time-use-only’ affair. It works surprisingly less well when exposed to behaviour that is repeated. Nowak and Highfield discovered this when more rounds in their mathematical test of game theory were played. Not surprisingly, evolution based on human groupings and management aren’t one-time-only affairs. In other words, in most tribes and in management people engage with one another more often. Both aren’t one-timers. They establish longer term relationships. In sum, the limited range of participants and the one-time-only constraint of the prisoner dilemma restricts its explanatory power significantly.

Having outlined the theoretical and mathematical shortcomings of the prisoner dilemma, Nowak and Highfiled—together with their predecessors Darwin, Kropotkion, Axelrod and Hardin—argue that cooperation is the foundation of human behaviour and our success. Since human beings have been more successful and more cooperative than any other species on earth, they called them SuperCooperators. In other words, the Fortune 500, for example are not 500 business organizations engaged in a daily struggle for survival and competition. Instead they represent the height of human cooperation where, for example inside Volkswagen roughly 400,000 people cooperate to create a successful business. They do not compete with one another daily and neither do they struggle for survival.

Nowak and Highfield argue that the success of such extraordinary complex networks of cooperation has been possible because of five essential ingredients that underwrite human evolution and virtually all organizations:

These five have created natural selection that ‘has ensured that we are able to get more from social living than from pursuit of a solitary, selfish life’ (p. 272). ‘Working together in this way, we can achieve things as a society that no individual ever could’ (p. 275). And finally, ‘in his speech to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, Al Gore cited an African proverb that says, “if you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”. Nowak and Highfield conclude the book with something that many managers already know, solitary, individualism, competition, and selfishness never gets you as far as working together and cooperating. In sum, Nowak and Highfield’s research on human evolution and behaviour can assist managerial research programmes in shifting our emphasis from competition to cooperation in order to better understand the real determinants of success.