"rivalry can motivate competitors to perform at higher levels"

Excelente texto, "Research: We Take More Risks When We Compete Against Rivals":

"Rivalry is everywhere. We see rivalries in sports, business, school, and basically any arena where there is competition.
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There are many stories highlighting the benefits of rivalry, from how it makes competitors more motivated to how it helps them perform better.
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Yet despite the wealth of anecdotal evidence, scientific research into such rivalry relationships is scarce. We’ve spent the last few years studying what makes rivalry unique, how it affects our behavior, and how it impacts organizations.
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Our past findings support the idea that rivalry can motivate competitors to perform at higher levels, and they reveal that rivalry is sparked by experiences of similarity, repeated competition, and closely-decided contests.
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Our findings carry some important implications for individuals and organizations. Risk-taking is not inherently good or bad; it depends on the context. In organizations and industries in which experimentation, innovation, bold strategic moves, and thinking outside the box are valued (e.g., technology), rivalry could be an important lever for managers to pull to incentivize risk-taking. This could mean emphasizing longstanding corporate rivalries, or fostering (friendly) rivalries between employees, perhaps by creating incentive systems that provide for repeated competitions (of course, there are risks to doing this that should also be considered).
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On the other hand, some jobs and industries demand high-reliability, mistake-free output (e.g., accounting). In these contexts, managers would be well-served to minimize the effect of rivalry on their own, and their employees’, decisions. Managers should first assess the extent to which they want to encourage or discourage risk-taking behavior, and then find ways to either emphasize or de-emphasize rivalries to reach the organization’s ideal level of risk-taking. It’s also important to consider the physiological effects of rivalry, as long periods of competition against rivals could lead to stress-related burnout, due to chronically elevated arousal."