Any situation has benefits for the people in it. In some cases the benefits of the situation are different for each person involved. If this is recognized, compromize's can be made to "optimize" the situation. in this case "optimize" means people get what they want and give up what they won't miss much.

If however the same parts of a situation have a high importance to more than one person the situation is competitive and there may be no universal solution, or comprimize worth making to reconcile the situation, one or more parties must loose.

This is a simplified and idealized speculation, but to illustrate the concept, I started playing around with a math formula, more detail is needed for a full fomula, this is just to explore the possabilities assuming the specifics of the relationships have been established. And lacking a formal math background it is most likely wrong anyway. But it helps me think, so here goes.

The set of people, P.

$\mathit{P} = \{p_1, p_2,...,p_n\}$

The situation, S, each part of the situation is represented by a member of S such as sn.

$\mathit{S} = \{s_1, s_2,...,s_n\}$

The subset of parts of the situation, an..., that affect the person.

$\mathit{R}(\mathit{P}) = \mathit{S} ; r_n \subset \mathit{S}$ $\mathit{A} = \{R(p_1,S), R(p_2,S),..R(p_n,S)\}$

Importance, D or the benefit to the person, for that persons part of the situation.

$\mathit{D}(p_n,a_n)$

The total, T, of importance, D, for all persons affected, P, by thier part of the situation, api.

$\mathit{T} = \sum_{i=1} \mathit{D}(p_i, a_i)+$

A competetive situation being where the importance is greater for a person than the importance per person for the group.

$\mathit{D}(p_i,a_i) \gt ; \mathit{T}/\mathit{n}$
Collaborative situations being where the person is better off sharing with the group.
$\mathit{T}/\mathit{n} \gt ; \mathit{D}(p_i,a_i)$