Capital Ideas is now Chicago Booth Review but unfortunately original articles are no longer available. If you click through you will be taken to the Internet Archive site to find an archived copy.
People want to have positive views of themselves, and organize much of their lives around maintaining, enhancing, and protecting their self-esteem. By simply comparing oneself to more successful rivals, one’s self-esteem may become threatened. These comparisons are particularly intense in the business world when rivals are members of the same company-such as competitors for organizational rewards and promotions-as opposed to rivals from other firms.
The subtleties of internal and external rivalry are the subject of this study, which examines how these comparisons affect the way in which people react to ideas that come from internal or external rivals. Using four different surveys, the authors show that employees engaged in internal competition often respond defensively and tend to ignore the ideas of their rivals (i.e., they see these ideas as tainted), while employees engaged in external competition pay vigilant attention to ideas from outside the organization (i.e., they find the ideas tempting).
Authors: Hoon-Seok Choi, Leigh Thompson, Tanya Menon
Source: “Capital Ideas”
Subject: Organizational Behavior
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