We investigate the psychological phenomenon of rivalry, and propose a view of competition as inherently relational, thus extending the literatures on competition between individuals, groups, and firms. Specifically, we argue that the relationships between competitors -as captured by their proximity, relative attributes and prior competitive interactions -can influence the subjective intensity of rivalry between them, which in turn can affect their competitive behavior. Initial tests of these ideas within NCAA basketball indicate that (1) dyadic relationships between teams are highly influential in determining perceptions of rivalry (2) similarity between teams and their histories of prior interactions are systematically predictive of rivalry and (3) rivalry may affect the motivation and performance of team members. These findings suggest significant implications for both the management of employees and the competitive strategies taken by organizations. Airways after the latter admitted to having launched a "dirty tricks" campaign against its rival, which included calling Virgin's customers and lying to them about flight cancellations in addition to circulating rumors that Virgin CEO Richard Branson was infected with HIV (Branson, 1998). In a slightly less scandalous example, Boston Scientific recently overpaid for its acquisition of Guidant -later referred to as "arguably the second-worst" acquisition ever -in large part because it was bidding against rival Johnson & Johnson (Malhotra, Ku, & Murnighan, 2008;Tully, 2006).It is evident from these examples that rivalry can be a powerful psychological phenomenon with substantial behavioral consequences. To date, however, the psychology of rivalry has received little attention from researchers, which is symptomatic of a broader lack of study on the relationships between competitors. We attempt to fill this gap by presenting a theory of rivalry as a subjective relationship between competitors, and by investigating its antecedents and consequences. In doing so, we draw upon the literatures on competition between individuals, groups, and organizations. After outlining our theoretical model, we conduct a first-test of our hypotheses within a setting known to be rife with rivalry: NCAA basketball.
BACKGROUND AND THEORY DEVELOPMENT