Abstract
Risk taking is fundamental to organizational decision making. Extending prior work that has identified individual and situational antecedents of risk taking, we explore a significant relational antecedent: rivalry. In both a field setting and a laboratory experiment, we explore how a competitor's identity and relationship with the decision maker influences risk taking. We analyze play-by-play archival data from the National Football League and find that interactions with rival (versus nonrival) partners increases risky behavior. In a laboratory experiment involving face-to-face competition, we demonstrate that rivalry increases risk taking via two pathways: increased promotion focus and physiological arousal. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating relational characteristics to understand risk taking. Our findings also advance our understanding of when and why competition promotes risk taking, and underscore the importance of identity and relationships in the psychology and physiology of competitive decision making in organizations.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1281-1306 |
| Number of pages | 26 |
| Journal | Academy of Management Journal |
| Volume | 61 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 2018 |
Funding
We thank Brett Allison, Lesha Bhansali, Alisha Charya, Riddhi Deliwala, Max Donahue, Jonathan Ferng, James Rein, and Kristina Wald for their excellent research assistance, as well as Eryan Gisches and the Crooms family for their research support. We would also like to thank the Wharton Behavioral Laboratory, the Eller School Organizational Behavioral Laboratory, and the Stern Behavioral Lab for their financial support. Lastly, we gratefully thank three anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and insightful comments on an earlier draft.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Business and International Management
- General Business, Management and Accounting
- Strategy and Management
- Management of Technology and Innovation