Difference Between Coordination and Cooperation

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Coordination and Cooperation

While most people are pretty familiar with the meaning of

coordination and cooperation in terms of biology and anatomy,
there are still some misconceptions about their similarity and
difference in terms of management that I’ll address here. I’ll also
use some analogies with their biological meaning, to explain their
meaning in management.

Cooperation includes several people that all have the same goals
they want to achieve. In order to achieve them, they start working
together and form a system that is supposed to bring them to the
achievement they’re striving for faster than if they were to all
work individually. However, the result of cooperation, the
achieved common goal, is a result of each individual member of
the system. In other words, even if there was no cooperation
present, in most cases, the goal would have been achieved
anyway, although at much greater cost of time, resources or
people.
Coordination is different in that regard. A great example is human
motoric coordination. You coordinate your hand movements to at
the same time, say, open a jar. If you tried to open it with either
hand individually, you would have failed. It is the combined effort
that brought the idea to fruition. Therefore, coordination is
fundamentally different from cooperation. Another way to look at
this is the following – when a group of people becomes
coordinated, that group can be regarded as another entity working
on its own. However, when people are cooperative, that just
means that they form an enterprise in which they will each
individually work more efficiently and altogether achieve a goal
faster than they would otherwise.
When looking at coordination and cooperation in terms of
managing a company, the basic difference is in the fact that
coordination is something intrinsic to the organization, while
cooperation is voluntary and based on each member of the
organization individually. Following a similar train of thought,
coordination can be looked at as the wider term than cooperation,
seeing as a coordinated system will also inherently be a system
with cooperative members. Additionally, cooperation is required
as a first step to achieving coordination.

What is Cooperation?
When talking about this term, it is best to look at the social and
biological definition. Namely, cooperation is described as the
process in which a group of different organisms, not necessarily
from the same species, though they usually are, works together for
the common benefit of the community they’re in. This is opposed
to just working individually for selfish benefit, which also
consequentially creates competition among those organisms. The
economic model of cooperation follows this same guideline –
removing competition and enforcing work that benefits the group
rather than an individual. Seeing as people are usually selfish
(which is not a bad thing), not everyone can become cooperative,
and not in every environment. Therefore, it is necessary to have a
few dedicated questions during the job interview that will
determine whether the applicant would be suitable and
cooperative for the job at hand. Furthermore, several methods can
be implemented that will increase the level and depth of
cooperation in a group, usually called team building. Team
building is a process in which a team or any other group of people
that wants to deepen their cooperation participates in different
activities that require cooperation to be fun, such as team sports.
This method will both increase the level of cooperation in a group,
as well as increase the productivity of each member (and therefore
the group as a whole) and each member’s overall satisfaction with
the job they have.

What is Coordination?
I’ll refer to the biological definition of motor coordination here –
it is a deliberate combination of body movements that are
altogether named actions. To be more precise, that combination
has to be perfectly timed and the different movements must be
perfectly synchronized. Thankfully, this isn’t too hard for us
because our brain is developed enough for that task, but there are
cases where people have issues with their coordination due to
different diseases. Very young children also have next to no
coordination. But when looking at coordination from the
management and economics perspective, things might look
different, but fundamentally the same concept remains. The
example I mentioned earlier is perfect here as well – the process
of opening a jar. You can’t open that jar with one hand. You can
only do that with the combined motion of both your hands in
opposite directions. Therefore, coordination results in the whole
group of people seeming like one single entity.

Difference
between Coordinatio
n and Cooperation
1) Depth of Coordination and Cooperation

Coordination includes a deeper level of connection and

communication between the members of a group, while
cooperation is voluntary and can be achieved with a level of
communication that is much shallower.

2) Preservation of Coordination and Cooperation

When, for example, introducing a new member to the team or

group that was previously coordinated, it will take a very long
period of time for the new member to completely assimilate with
the group and for the group to become fully coordinated once
again. On the other hand, introducing a new member to a group of
cooperative people won’t break the system in any way, as long as
the newly introduced member is cooperative as well.

3) Scope of Coordination and Cooperation

As I’ve mentioned, coordination can be looked at as if it has a

deeper meaning, or a wider scope, because a group that is
coordinated will also be cooperative, while a group that is
cooperative isn’t necessarily coordinated as well.

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