Internal competition is often used as an incentive to create excitement and interest with the ultimate goal being increased sales and profits to the organization.  Many of these competitions involve exotic trips if region 1 beats region 2, for example, and throughout the contest period reports tracking how each is doing in comparison to the other are posted with bragging rights changing from week to week.  Although more products may be sold and dollars dropped to the bottom-line during the contest period, some real long-term problems can result from internal competition.  One problem is what we refer to as the silo effect whereby individuals, districts, and regions lose site of what is good for the company as a whole and begin to focus only on what is good for their silo.   Another downside of these types of internal competition is that they can promote cheating and dishonesty by individuals whose ethics were never questioned in the past.  Good people can become very bad people when internal competition becomes their primary focus and personal winning becomes their only goal.