Do Lower-Power Individuals Really Compete Less? An Investigation of Covert Competition

Competition is one of the defining features of organizational life. In this research, we identify a prevalent but overlooked type of competition—covert competition, which we define as behaviors with the intention to win (i.e., advancing one’s interest/position while disregarding or hurting the other party’s interest/position) that are unclear to or hidden from the other party. We argue that one’s relative power in dyadic social relationships influences covert competition. Based on the theory of power dependence, we expect that lower-power individuals are more likely than higher-power individuals to compete covertly. This is because lower-power individuals fear the potential negative repercussions of revealing their competitiveness, which motivates them to engage in more covert competition. Lower-power individuals’ ability to escape from the current relationship mitigates the effects of having lower power on such fear and on their subsequent covert competition. With five experiments and a three-wave longitudinal survey study, we find support for our hypotheses. This research calls attention to the understudied covert form of competition and emphasizes the nuanced relationships between power and competitive behaviors.