Evolution of Internal Competition Within Organizational Boundaries: A Comprehensive Literature Review

To analyze the process of internal competition within organization’s structure, the concentration is on employee’s perspective of internal social comparison followed by intra-organizational competition developing between subordinates. The organization’s perspective of internal competition is subjected to intra-organizational evolution for developing competitiveness in business operations. For evaluation of internal competition in organization a comprehensive literature review has been developed in 2 parts. Part 1: “Intra-organizational competition”: Intra-organizational competition is the resultant of Internal social comparison. Not all employees are competition ready. Employees benchmark their performance and contribution against each other. They compare remuneration and work behavior. Part 2: “Intra-organizational evolution”: Based on ‘Variation’ associated with decentralization of command, ‘Selection’ in terms of allocating scares resources and ‘Retention’ depending on managerial ability for implementing organizational strategy for exhibiting internal competition. Scientific database such as Google Scholar, Emerald Insight, EBSCO host and Science Direct has been researched. 37 research papers includes internal social comparison and intra-organizational competition, similarly 23 research papers are selected for intra-organizational evolution. Methodology of selecting papers is based on PRISMA 2020. The literature review emphasize on treating co-workers as competitors, however organizations management focuses on increasing productivity by developing internal competition. A conceptual framework of internal competition has been developed. The level of competition and control between employees and business management derives the span and scale of internal competition within the organization’s boundaries.