Is sibling rivalry good or bad for high technology organizations?

Inter-unit competition,1 generally, evokes mixed feelings among both academicians and business executives. Executive policies promoting inter-unit competition create a double-edged sword of pressures for line managers for enhanced competitiveness. In this paper, I highlight the significance and importance of inter-unit competition in high technology organizations. I propose that the autonomy to choose market breadth facilitates and promotes inter-unit competition and that this relationship is further strengthened by evaluating units using objective criteria. In addition, I identify both internal and external conditions under which inter-unit competition may be beneficial or harmful (not beneficial) to the unit and hence, the organization. Several important theoretical and practical contributions are identified.