Abstract
Existing research demonstrates the benefits organizations can receive from its portfolio of stakeholders. An evangelist, however, is one type of stakeholder defined by a passionate organizational dedication and is theorized to be highly influential in creating organizational value. In fact, there is limited evidence for how and why evangelists can instead have a negative impact organizational value creation. We put forth theory that anti-social behavior from external evangelical stakeholders can be understood by capturing perceptions of interorganizational rivalries. We tested whether individual-level, real-world behaviors are associated with interorganizational-level rivalry using multi-year data sets from police organizations from high-stakes professional sport games in the Bundesliga (Germany) and the National Football League (NFL, United States). Through combining archival, secondary, and primary data, results showed that fan’s perceived rivalry toward opponent sport organizations predicted more anti-social behaviors including aggression, arrests, and pressed charges. Our findings demonstrate the complex nature of engaging evangelists through interorganizational rivalries, as these can spillover and predict anti-social behaviors that damage both the focal organizations along with the well-being of stakeholders. Missionaries for the organization can become mercenaries against interorganizational rivals.