Abstract
There is an important constraint that can be used to regulate mobility in competitive labor markets—the existence of a deeply felt rivalry between employers. Rivalry denotes a stable antagonistic relationship between companies, as exemplified by Apple and IBM in the 1980s. Analyzing data from the Palio di Siena (an ancient horse race in Siena, Italy), this article shows that direct moves between rivals are rare, accounting for less than 2% of all career moves in this context between 1743 and 2011. Rivalry constrains not only direct but also indirect moves to the ally of a rival or the rival of an ally. This article presents a framework describing how managers can harness rivalry: mapping rivalry, managing rivalry to capitalize on its positive aspects, and leveraging rivalry to adjust the level of competitive intensity.
Keywords
Unsurprisingly, managers are looking for ways to regulate outward mobility to protect valuable skills and resources. Retention bonuses and noncompete agreements (NCAs) are deployed to prevent moving to competitors. But in labor markets where skilled employees are scarce, and noncompetes are contested and less and less binding, 9 how can companies attract, manage, and retain talent?
Our starting point is the observation that market competition is not unfettered; employees’ tendency to move within and between organizations is moderated by structural constraints, which can prove even more effective than traditional methods in reducing the competition for talent. One such constraint is the existence of a competitive rivalry between employers.
Rivalry as a Structural Constraint
Rivalry is a stable antagonistic relationship between individuals or companies that is subjective in nature, featuring higher psychological stakes than competition and strong negative feelings toward the opponent. 10 Rivalry is ever-present in history, as testified to by the rivalry between gods in Greek mythology or that between Rome and Carthage. It is a common occurrence in all walks of life, taking place both within and between companies. Examples include Apple and IBM in the 80s, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic in the 90s, Coke and Pepsi, the Red Sox and the Yankees, or Cambridge and Oxford. Rivalry is also increasingly present in the policy arena. For example, in the U.S. military, interservice rivalry (e.g., the Air Force vs. the Navy) has been linked to unethical practices such as falsifying performance data. 11
While similar in some ways, rivalry and competition are distinct in nature. According to Kilduff, Elfenbein, and Staw, 12 competition refers to any situation in which the goals or outcomes of actors are opposed to each other, while rivalry implies personalized antagonism, nurtured through narratives and practices that increase the physical and psychological distance between actors. For example, Microsoft in the late 1990s tried to activate feelings of rivalry among their employees by hanging punching bags emblazoned with the Linux penguin and by distributing hats that read “We put the NO in Nokia.” 13 PepsiCo employees are still not allowed to name Coca Cola products, referred to as “red products,” nor drink or bring any of the rivals’ products on corporate premises, denoted as the “blue camp.” 14 The historic rivalry between Adidas and Puma divides the inhabitants of Herzogenaurach, the German town where both companies were founded and are headquartered. The rivalry is so pervasive that the Puma and Adidas clans own rival football teams and go to different bakeries, butchers, and pubs. Dress codes divide the city into two camps. 15
Unlike diffuse, impersonal competition, rivalry constitutes a system of personal relationships that simultaneously binds and separates. The fact that mutual antagonism can bind people or companies together is highlighted by two of the greatest playwrights. For Oscar Wilde, Wherever there is hatred between two people, there is a bond of some kind. By some strange law of the antipathy of the similar, you loathed each other, not because in so many ways you were different, but because in some you were so alike.
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One of the characters in his plays encapsulates this observation in a memorable line: “He and I are closer than friends. We are enemies linked together.” 17
The notion that relationships of rivalry are positively binding is also conveyed in one of Shakespeare’s most unforgettable plays, Romeo and Juliet. It represents the city of Verona as a system of alliances and rivalries, rooted in the long-standing enmity between the families of the Montagues and Capulets. The rivalry between them was so intense and encompassing that it affected not only personal relations but also commercial transactions and even marriage prospects. The love of Romeo and Juliet ultimately failed to bridge the divide between the feuding families.
Rivalry in Competitive Labor Markets: Insights from the Palio di Siena
To establish whether relationships of rivalry are strong enough to influence employees’ behavior in labor markets, we turned to another historical context in Italy—the city of Siena. Adopting an inductive approach, we identified the perfect opportunity to study rivalry in the Palio di Siena—a horse race that goes back eight centuries. The Palio takes place every year on July 2 and August 16. It involves 10 of the 17 city districts (“contrada”) chosen by lot, running 3 times around the main city square for about 90 seconds. A district in Siena is akin to a microstate, with a distinctive identity: a small, cohesive community with established territorial boundaries, government, and loyalty-promoting symbols. 18
The Palio is more than a horse race: it is the galloping heart of a city that lives with the race for the whole year. 19 The Sienese do not pick their contrada; they are born into it. The race is about pride—residents passionately support their neighborhood by wearing its colors and singing songs that mock the other rivals. They are exposed to rivalry since their childhood through activities, narratives, and symbols. 20
The Palio features a network of entrenched rivalries and alliances between districts that do their utmost to win the race or prevent the rival from winning it. The degree of affection for one’s district can only be exceeded by the degree of hatred for the rival. Rivals do their best to disturb each other in the race by any means necessary. These range from passing in front of the rival to slow him down to physical encounters that can be mild (whipping the rival’s horse) or violent (unhorsing the rival jockey). When a district fails to win, its rival celebrates nearly as merrily as a victory of its own. The captain of a district would spend months devising a strategy to win the race and prevent the rival from winning it, sounding out jockeys, forming secret pacts, and plotting against the rival.
That rivalry affects the strategies of districts, and relationships between their members are an accepted fact. What is more surprising is that the effects of rivalry extend even to domains that are regulated by a market logic, such as the labor market for professional jockeys. In Siena, jockeys are mercenaries who provide their services to a district for a specific Palio. As a former district captain explained to us, the expectation is that jockeys would display loyalty to their employer. Jockeys are crucial to the chances of winning; captains work year-round to develop ties with them and hire a top jockey in a labor market where the competition for talent is intense. 21 The nurturing of ties with a jockey takes multiple forms, including the building of mutual trust at social events or the provision of professional services at favorable terms by captains and district members. The remuneration of top jockeys is comparable to that of soccer players.
We analyzed the impact of rivalry on jockeys’ careers by collecting data on the career moves of 480 jockeys over more than two centuries (from 1743 to 2011). We also conducted 36 interviews with current and former captains, active and retired jockeys, active district members, journalists, and Palio experts, and we accessed an archive of 75 interviews with captains and jockeys to better understand the drivers of career mobility. The interviews covered a wide range of topics, including hiring practices and preferences, social norms and expectations, personal experiences, organizational practices, historical facts, and features of the rivalry between districts. The results of our analyses confirm that direct moves between rival districts (i.e., a jockey employed by one district who is employed by a rival district at the next race) tend to be rare, accounting for less than 2% of all career moves observed in the Palio between 1743 and 2011.
We also explored whether a rivalry extends beyond the focal dyad of rival districts by impeding moves to the allies of rivals or the rivals of allies. Past research indicates that rivalry is not confined to individuals, but often extends to groups connected by alliances.
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For example, in Siena, each district has, on average, two or three formal allies who can be mobilized against the rival. Our results indicate that rivalry inhibits not only direct but also indirect moves—to the ally of a rival or the rival of an ally. Jockeys recognize the existence of opposing camps and carefully navigate the networks of relationships. In the words of a leading jockey, “If I run for the Black camp at one time, I won’t be the one that runs with the White camp in the next round.” Another jockey told us that You won’t go to the other camp, to the rival or the district that is close to the rival. This is because of the relationships you develop and the emotional bonds. You can’t go on one side and then on the other.
Our findings so far indicate that moves between rival camps are rare. But in the unlikely event that such a move occurs, what type of employee is at risk? To address this question, we analyzed several factors, including the degree of professionalization and the profile of jockeys (their geographical origin and career performance). Our findings indicate that as the labor market of jockeys became more developed, and the pay of jockeys improved, relationships of rivalry became not less but more important in shaping career mobility. We observed a dual process: jockeys are more likely to change employers in pursuit of better pay, but their career trajectories are increasingly constrained by rivalry, attesting to the enduring salience of reputation in mature markets. As they become established professionals, jockeys go to great lengths to maintain their reputation for reliability, displaying adherence to social norms and expectations. 23
We found that jockeys who move to a rival tend to be neither natives of Siena nor from a distant part of the country, but come from the region surrounding the city (see Figure 1). Citizens of Siena tend to abide by the norms due to their integration in the city, while those from a distant region are subject to stricter monitoring because of their status as “outsiders.” The suspicion toward outsiders encourages these jockeys to adhere closely to the social conventions in the local context. We also identified a relationship between a jockey’s performance and his conformity to norms regulating rivalry. A jockey with a poor winning record is more likely to pursue quick market gains by moving to a rival. The fact that he is unlikely to become a top performer provides an incentive to “cash in” by accepting any job offer, ignoring the constraints related to rivalry. At the other end, a successful jockey with a solid winning record is likely to receive offers from several districts and may be tempted to move to a rival if the financial gain offsets the reputational cost of moving to a rival. Our analyses indicate that average performers are the least likely to move to a rival.
Geography, performance, and mobility to a rival employer.
Framework for Managers: How Can Companies Make Use of Rivalry to Gain a Competitive Edge?
Our results highlight the opportunities and threats associated with competitive rivalry in labor markets. How can organizations unleash the power of rivalry in their talent recruitment/retention strategy? We relied on interviews to understand what organizational practices may be used to maximize the benefits of rivalry. The coding of the data yielded an inductive process framework of three steps: Mapping, Managing, and Leveraging interorganizational rivalries. We present the framework derived from the Palio context below (Figure 2).
Process model: Mapping, managing, and leveraging rivalry.
Mapping Rivalries
This practice has two steps. First, create an accurate map of the rivalries and alliances around your company. The objective is to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the possibilities for action. This step is straightforward in Siena, where rivalries and alliances are formally declared and publicly visible. The maps prepared during this step are then used in the construction of strategies for a race. In the business environment, the identification of rivalry is generally driven by objective criteria, such as geographic proximity, frequency of competitive interactions, and shared history of competition. For example, companies headquartered in the same area, having common suppliers, or competing in the same market(s) are more likely to see each other as rivals. Rivalry identification may also reflect a subjective assessment, as Kilduff and colleagues highlight. Once rivalries are formally identified, it is necessary to map out the formal alliances and informal collaborations around each pair of rivals, identifying the alliance network. 24 To this end, managers can use data on interfirm collaboration, which may take the form of contractual alliance, joint venture, board interlock, stable distribution, a formal manufacturing agreement, or yet another form. 25 A better understanding of one’s rivals and allies can be achieved by network visualization, through which companies can identify their position in the competitive environment. 26 Accurate mapping helps to comprehend the structural constraints on mobility within the competitive landscape by identifying the rivals, the allies of rivals, and the rivals of allies.
Second, mapping also includes identifying the employees within a company that are more likely to be amenable to rivalry constraints and opportunities. The captains in Siena use past relationships and career performance, based on jockeys winning records over time, to predict which individuals are more likely to move. Criteria such as professionalism, past performance, and geographic residence are relevant to a business context. Our Palio analyses suggest that very low and very high performance facilitates moves to a rival, and that very short or considerable geographic distance constrains mobility to an enemy. Managers can look for similar proxies in their industry to identify employees at risk. For example, they can look at the extent to which professional norms/certifications matter in their industry. They can identify relevant performance measures, and they can use distance from headquarters to map the geographic dimension. Once managers have created an accurate map of the competitive landscape and the employees at risk, they can deploy such knowledge to manage recruitment and retention processes.
Managing Rivalries
To prevent the possibility of losing an employee to a rival, managers need to devise practices to bolster employee commitment and loyalty. This can be achieved in several ways. In Siena, districts create shared narratives of past competitive interactions, 27 reinforced through the use of colors, nicknames, and cheers. 28 A sense of belonging can be nurtured by deepening social connections. A famous jockey told us that on his first day with a new employer, they took him to a different district and told him—“This is our rival; this is the first thing you should know about us.” Commitment is bolstered through lunches and dinners, rituals, and songs. Likewise, companies can promote a distinctive identity through narratives and socialization practices, reinforcing the perceived benefits of loyalty and the cost of moving to the rival. These practices should target all employees, but a particular effort should be directed to those more sensitive to the constraint and opportunities presented by rivalry, as identified in the first step.
Leveraging Rivalries
Rivalry can be leveraged to facilitate employee retention or recruitment from a rival employer. In Siena, captains leverage the sense of belonging and social bonds to prevent the loss of a successful jockey to the rival. In the words of a top jockey, In the Goose, everyone believes in you, from the one-year-old child to the 90-year-old man. They manage to convey strong motivations to you without putting too much pressure. When you wear that jacket, you are one of them . . . I am in touch with several districts, but I cannot go to their rival.
In the business context, social bonds often reduce the need to provide economic incentives or deploy noncompetes to retain talent. Recruiters need to be aware of the specificities of rivalry when trying to recruit from a rival. They should identify “passive candidates”—recent hires in a remote location or feeling underappreciated. Upon identifying targeted employees, managers need to leverage rivalry in their negotiation with the targets, paying a premium to offset the reputational consequences of a move to a rival. Managers may also devise trajectories of mobility, such as by encouraging a potential recruit from a rival to move at first to allies. These friendly career moves can be facilitated by providing help with the identification of opportunities or with relocation. Explicit pacts can be concluded between allied firms for offering advantages (monetary compensation or job flexibility) to employees moving between allies.
Leveraging rivalry also entails coping with unsuccessful retention strategies—that is, losing an employee to a rival. Companies need to manage the consequences of these moves carefully. Such departures are unpleasant, but they can be leveraged to create a bridge between the companies, reducing competitive tension. Our research attests that when employees move between rivals, they often retain positive memories of their employer. The memories may yield performance benefits in the form of less intense competition 29 and lower probability for conflict escalation. 30 Firms may exploit this rare type of mobility by cultivating personal relationships with former employees and by creating a network of alumni that yields reputation benefits and contributes to moderating (antagonistic) relationships between companies.
Applying the Framework to the Business Context: Selected Case Studies
What we observed in the Palio can be observed as well in business, professional sports, and academia. Consider the figures presented in Table 1.
Career Moves between Rival Firms.
Source: LinkedIn.
In business, direct moves to rivals involve only a tiny proportion of employees, even in quasi-duopolies. Rivalry is present in a wide array of industries, from aeronautics to consumer goods. It often starts with founders, as in the case of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos 31 in the space race context or the Dassler brothers in the sportswear context.
One can expect that mobility between rivals is conditioned on geographic distance. But a frequency analysis shows that moves between rivals remain low even when featuring rivalries between firms in the same geographical area. Consider BMW and Mercedes-Benz, headquartered in the same southern German cluster. Only 1.38% of their employees have worked for both. A similar level is observed with Symantec and McAfee, rivals in the software security industry. This is surprising, given that their headquarters are located in the same area, and noncompetes are not binding in California. Wall Street boasts the historical rivalry between Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the two leading investment banks. 32 Data collected from LinkedIn show that professionals rarely move between rivals. In contrast, they move more frequently to large generalist banks, like Citi or JPMorgan, to competitors like Merrill Lynch (now Bank of America) or to specialized boutiques.
These trends extend to professional sports (Table 2). Moves between rivals are extremely rare if one takes into account that the total number of players featured in teams for the periods of observation in Table 2 is between 960 and 4,000. In the most established rivalries in soccer, the proportion of moves between rivals decreased after World War II, despite the professionalization of soccer and the huge increase in remuneration. For example, only ten players crossed the divide between bitter rivals River Plate and Boca Juniors in Argentina. Only two transfers have occurred after 1996, even though salaries had increased fivefold in the past two decades. Football teams capitalize on strong identities, managing and leveraging social, religious, and cultural divides to impede inter-rival mobility. The rivalry between the Catholic “Celtic” and Protestant “Rangers” clubs in Glasgow, Scotland, one of the most intense in soccer, leverages religious, economic, and political divides. The rivalry between Real Madrid and Barcelona in Spain feeds off political tensions and regional divides. An analysis we conducted on the career moves of baseball players in the United States between 1920 and 2015 33 shows that in almost a century, no direct move occurred between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees. The indirect moves are 180 out of 2,692 total market transfers realized by both teams.
Career Moves between Rivals in Top Soccer Rivalries Worldwide.
Source: Wikipedia, Transfermarkt.
Similar conclusions are reached when considering the rivalry between Ford and General Motors. In 1994, General Motors’ network of partners included Toyota, Isuzu, Suzuki, and Saab, competing globally with a group of Ford partners, including Nissan, Mazda, Kia, and Jaguar. In 2004, General Motors’ network of partners included Opel, Saab, Vauxhall, Suzuki, Isuzu, and Daewoo, while Ford’s network included Mazda, Volvo, Jaguar, and Aston Martin. The two rival networks, built using co-ownership, joint venture, and alliance data from Automotive News, are presented in Figure 3. The size of each node is proportional to the number of employees in 2004: the two alliance constellations employed 1.361 million employees in total. We found that only 2.18% of the total number of employees moved between rivals, while the indirect moves (i.e., moves of a Ford employee to a firm belonging to the General Motors alliance constellation, or vice versa) are 2.53%, even in the case of geographic overlap. This is further evidence that constraints on mobility between rivals extend to indirect moves to an ally of a rival or a rival of an ally.
Map of Ford-General Motors automotive rivalries and alliances between 1994 and 2004.
A closer look into selected cases allowed us to observe how companies use mapping, managing, and leveraging to capture the benefits of competitive rivalry. We selected three cases: the ongoing rivalries between Airbus and Boeing, Puma and Adidas, and the academic rivalry between the departments of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard from the 1940s to the 1980s. We used a collection of archival sources (1 monograph, 13 articles, and 4 internal documents) and conducted six interviews with employees at featured organizations. We coded interviews and archival data looking for instances in which rivalry affected mobility, documenting practices of mapping, managing, and leveraging. Table 3 summarizes our findings, providing examples of mapping, managing, and leveraging from these contexts. It shows how companies can develop a new type of dynamic capability by harnessing the constraining capacity of rivalries.
Mapping, Managing, and Leveraging Rivalries.
Note: MIT = Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In the featured cases, the existence of a rivalry is acknowledged both by our interviewees and by archival sources. Rivalry is often triggered by personal events, such as the conflict between the Dassler brothers in the case of Adidas and Puma. Antagonism was nurtured and maintained by performance similarity, geographic proximity, and product overlap and was extended to third parties. Suppliers clustered on either Rudolph (Puma) or Adolph’s side (Adidas), structuring the business networks of the two companies. 34 The two camps devised strategies to identify and attract unaffiliated firms as suppliers or customers. The same pattern is observable in other industries. For example, when Airbus entered the U.S. commercial airline space, they made an effort to identify suppliers who were not connected in any manner to Boeing, such as the Piper company. Mapping also entailed identifying employees amenable to moving to or from a rival, such as young PhDs with no publications yet (MIT) or academic top performers (Harvard).
Our research provided insights into how companies managed to harness rivalry to bolster loyalty and constrain mobility. Some techniques were context-specific. The Adidas-Puma rivalry capitalized on natural divides to curb social interaction between employees. The river Aurach separates the northern part of Herzogenaurach, associated with Adidas, from the southern part, hosting Puma. The employees attended different pubs, butchers, and bakeries and supported rival soccer teams. The display of corporate symbols was encouraged and used to test one’s sense of belonging. In the words of German Hacker, former Mayor of Herzogenaurach, “If someone comes in through the door, your gaze still wanders to their shoes . . . the city has been defined as ‘the town of the lowered gaze.’” 35
Other “rivalry management” techniques are generic, such as the use of narratives celebrating one’s own successes/virtues and the rival’s failures/sins. Examples include Olympic/World Cup wins in the Adidas and Puma Case, 36 the celebration of Nobel victories or policy appointments in the MIT-Harvard case, 37 or technical achievements in the Boeing-Airbus rivalry. Scandals involving the rival 38 —such as the 737-Max airplane crashes by Boeing or the corruption charges against Airbus in 2016—were used to reinforce internal narratives that bolster identification and loyalty. Another generic element is the use of family metaphors to reinforce aversion to the rival. “You have to understand that a department is a family” was the refrain of the MIT Economics Department Chair used to nurture young recruits in the face of rivalry escalation. In Herzogenaurach, families were encouraged to pick a side: “Outside the Dassler family, other families either identified with Puma or Adidas—never both. Married couples, both of whom worked for different brands, were virtually non-existent.” Common across cases was the effort to overlay business rivalries with high-level political, ideological, and religious divides.
Companies can leverage rivalry in ways that yield benefits in the form of commitment and higher retention. Consider the observations of a former Boeing employee. She told us she would never work for the rival of her past employer: “Personally, the thought of working for them . . . I [would] feel like a traitor. I would rather go back to my company in another function. There is some loyalty. I can’t go to Airbus.” 39 She would consider a move to Boeing suppliers, but not to companies allied to Airbus. She observed that there is a limited overlap between the allies and suppliers of Boeing and Airbus. This example shows that even in markets featuring talent shortage, like aeronautics in 2018, 40 deeply felt rivalries make employees less likely to move to an ally of the rival of their past employer or the rival of an ally. Adidas signed a contract with David Beckham when he was yet unknown by helping him sort out insurance payments for his car. Early engagement and strong personal bonds led to a long-lasting commitment that ruled out Puma and other competitors who tried to poach him throughout his career.
We observed several strategies for leveraging rivalry in recruitment. One involves focusing the search on talent pools not affiliated with the rival camp. Airbus set up its commercial network in North America by recruiting only from firms that did not collaborate with Boeing. In 1985, they poached John Leahy away from Piper, a small manufacturer, emphasizing the mutual benefits of a move that is free of tensions related to rivalry. Another strategy entails luring talent from the rival camp by challenging the rival’s identity. Such efforts are often deployed in negotiations with potential recruits who may feel constrained by excessive demands of loyalty or resist company initiatives. For example, even when the rivalry was at its most intense, Harvard and MIT never engaged in financial bidding wars over professors. MIT recruited from the rival camp by offering more flexible conditions, which are less common at Harvard. Leveraging rivalry also entailed handling communications carefully in case such moves do occur, using them to decrease the intensity of rivalry in the long run, as evident in the reduced strength of the rivalry nowadays.
Intraorganizational Rivalry
Our framework is focused on interorganizational rivalry, but can be extended to intraorganizational rivalry. This form of personal rivalry between employees is pervasive in the workplace. A survey of U.S. workplace rivalry conducted by Monster, a provider of employment services, found that 73% of respondents have a workplace rival, that the rival is typically a coworker (49%), and that 40% rated their workplaces as having the highest levels of rivalry (being highly competitive work environment). The same source documents the relationship between workplace rivalry and external career mobility. It shows that 46% of respondents have either left a job or have considered leaving a job because of a workplace rival. 41
Rivalry within companies is similar to that across companies—intense and personal in nature, shaping employees’ behavior. Managers can map, manage, and leverage intraorganizational rivalries in ways that sustain competition while limiting the detrimental consequences of rivalry. On the upside, intraorganizational rivalry may have positive consequences in terms of motivation, competitiveness, and team performance. But it can also be detrimental. Consider the case where two employees see each other as rivals for promotion. Their mutual hostility is likely to lead to reduced interaction or cooperation. These situations lead to the formation of clusters around the rivals, where trust is accorded to one group but not the other. This affects the quality of the projects in which groups are involved, with mutual apprehension and suspicion reducing communication effectiveness.
According to a survey we conducted among working professionals employed full time in the United States in December 2020, 56% of respondents have considered leaving their workplace because of the ongoing rivalry, in agreement with the Monster survey. They would consider working on a joint project with a workplace rival only with a sizable salary premium (on average 33% of their annual pay). Unused collaboration opportunities may prevent the achievement of long-term strategic or operational objectives. Managers need to design practices to effectively map, manage, and leverage personal rivalries to bolster employee motivation while safeguarding collective interests.
Conclusion
Labor markets have become increasingly competitive, with dwindling attachment to employers by skilled employees. This trend continued during the pandemic and is not expected to abate in its aftermath. In the words of Anthony Thompson, Executive Board Director of the recruitment firm PageGroup, When we moved into this pandemic, there was very much a war for talent . . . there will be another war for talent on the way out. Companies will want to hire across all sectors . . . we’ve seen it in all past crisis; it’s just a matter of when.
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The race will intensify further with the adoption of “work from anywhere” policies—that is, allowing workers to permanently work from home.
Our findings suggest that markets may have become more competitive, but they are not soulless: deeply experienced relationships of rivalry and friendship shape employees’ careers and mobility patterns. We derived our framework from an analysis of the mobility of jockeys in the Palio di Siena. We provided examples of how companies managed to limit talent outflows by mapping, managing, and leveraging rivalries in contexts as diverse as business, sports, and academia. By managing rivalry, companies were able to mitigate the loss of talent. Several sources attest to the beneficial effect of rivalry. According to the historian Manfred Welker, concerning the rivalry between Adidas and Puma, “The mutual competition to be faster, better, and bigger has also boosted business.”
Considerably more attention in the business literature is devoted to collaborative (i.e., alliances) than competitive relationships (i.e., rivalry). Our research offers supporting evidence for the argument that antagonistic relationships may be more consequential for firm performance than positive relationships. 43 Managers should bear in mind Oscar Wilde’s advice: “Be careful to choose your enemies well. Friends don’t much matter. But the choice of enemies is very important.” 44
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
Author Biographies
Elisa Operti is an Associate Professor of Strategy at ESSEC Business School, France (email:
Stoyan V. Sgourev is a Professor of Management at ESSEC Business School, France (email:
Shemuel Y. Lampronti is an Assistant Professor of Strategy at Warwick Business School, UK (email: