"When colleagues compete outside the firm"

My wife and I recently went to go see our beloved (well, mostly my beloved) Chicago Cubs play their second game of the best of five National League Division Series against the Milwaukee Brewers.  Unfortunately, the Cubs lost, and we left the game early.  It was our first time at American Family Field, and it will probably be our last!  It wasn't that the Brewers faithful were unfriendly - to the contrary, most of the Brewers fans were very friendly.  However, when we asked one of the ticket ushers outside the ballpark which gate we should enter in order to get to our seat the fastest, we were told (in a friendly manner), "Go to the next gate down and then turn left."  It seemed like we walked half way around the ballpark before we finally came to our section.  When we left the game, to our surprise, we walked straight out of the gate that was closest to our seat, which happened to be the one that we should have entered on the way inside.  More importantly, it was the exact gate where we first saw the usher, who either mistakenly gave us the wrong directions (doubtful) or purposely steered us in the wrong direction (more likely).  By the way, we were both proudly wearing our Cubs gear!

I should have remembered the Robbers Cave experiment from the 1950's.  I should have realized, prior to attending a play-off baseball game in an "away" ballpark, that I represented the "outgroup".  Groups, teams, and organizations are usually very loyal to the other members of their "ingroup".  As described by Dr. Saul McLeod on Simply Psychology, the Robbers Cave experiment was conducted by Muzafer Sherif, who studied intergroup conflict and cooperation among 22 boys at a youth camp in Oklahoma. The boys were initially separated into two groups, and both groups went through the typical stages of group formation and eventually developed a group identity as well as a common bond and esprit de corps. When Sherif and his team of investigators introduced competitive tasks, the two groups were outright hostile to one another. The later introduction of cooperative tasks reduced this conflict, highlighting the role of shared goals in resolving group tensions.

I've posted a few times in the past about the Robbers Cave experiment (see "The Wager" and "Blueprint").  It's an important, if not controversial, study that could never be conducted today (for a more in-depth account, see the book The Lost Boys by Gina Perry).  Apparently, the psychologist Lufty Diab conducted a similar experiment in the 1960's with 18 boys from Beirut, Lebanon.  The "Blue Ghost" and "Red Genies" groups each contained 5 Christians and 4 Muslims. Fighting soon broke out, not between the Christians and Muslims but between the Red Genies and Blue Ghosts.

We all bring different backgrounds, interests, and life experiences to our groups, teams, and organizations.  That is a key reason why groups often make better decisions than individuals alone - diversity makes us strong!  However, there's a very good chance that we belong to more than one group.  For example, we may associate with a certain religious group, political party, club, or civic organization outside of our professional group.  And the interests and goals of one group may fail to align (or even outright clash) with those of another group in which we belong.

With this in mind, Thorsten Grohsjean, Henning Piezunka, and Maren Mickeler published an interesting study in the Strategic Management Journal, "When colleagues compete outside the firm".  They studied whether coworkers' collaboration inside an organization can be adversely impacted if their extra-organizational affiliations make them competitors outside the organization.  Importantly, they suggested that this effect could occur only if two conditions were present.  First, the individuals had to identify strongly with the external group, team, or organization.  Second, the level of competition between the internal group and external group had to be significant.

The investigators took advantage of a natural experiment involving professional football (soccer) players.  Players in the top five major European football leagues (English Premier League, French Ligue 1, Italian Lega Serie A, Spanish Laliga, and German Bundesliga) often represent their home countries on their national teams during the FIFA World Cup, an international football competition held every four years.  So, they may find themselves playing against their teammates during the World Cup competition.  They used a difference-in-difference study design, comparing the number of passes between players (player A to player B and vice versa) during the professional football season before the 2018 World Cup (2017/2018 season) and the season after (2018/2019).  They specifically compared teammates who competed against each other during the World Cup versus teammates who did not compete against each other during the World Cup.

The "treatment group" (teammates who competed against each other during the 2018 World Cup) consisted of 142 pairs of teammates, while the "control group" (teammates who did not compete against each other during the 2018 World Cup) consisted of 842 pairs of teammates.  The average number of passes between teammates who competed against each other during the 2018 World Cup decreased by about 11 percent!  In other words, there was something about competing against each other in the World Cup that led to a decrease in cooperation (as measured by the number of passes between teammates) in the subsequent professional football season.

While this is just one study, the results are likely generalizable to groups and organizations outside of professional football.  I would also say that as society becomes more polarized, these findings may assume even greater relevance.  What we experience outside of the work setting likely influences how we cooperate and collaborate inside the work setting.  

Oh and by the way, the fifth and deciding game between the Chicago Cubs and Milwaukee Brewers is being played tonight - in Milwaukee.  It's a good thing that most of my co-workers are Cubs fans too!  Let's go Cubbies!