Some people will, sure, but some systems encourage it more than others IMO. If a company designs their bonus system to encourage individualism and thus explici

Some people will, sure, but some systems encourage it more than others IMO. If a company designs their bonus system to encourage individualism and thus explicit competition for scarce dollars, then it creates a game that people think they have to win at the expense of their peers. In these cases, they have a bonus pool (the "budget"), differentiated pay philosophy (pay for performance), and rarely have an objective criteria for assigning rewards (manager decides and makes a case). In that situation you get a lot more in-fighting because it's the way the game is designed. If you remove the competitive angle by assigning rewards equally (say, at a certain level of seniority you get a fixed bonus %; or, the company assigns a 20% bonus to everyone to share in the profits), then you are no longer giving people a game to win against their peers.