I think this is basic competition.
For example, in board games, there are several types:
- Competitive games: every person for themselves; there’s one winner, everyone else loses
- Co-op games: every human vs. “the game”, often in the form of AI opponents, or environmental conditions; everyone wins or everyone loses
- Team games: X vs. Y players (and sometimes more than two teams); one team wins, everyone else loses
I feel like work is meant to be a co-op game, but just like co-op games, even though you’re supposed to be on the same team, you often still want to feel like “the best”. Not to the point of bringing the whole team down, but to the point you can secretly feel like you carried the team.
In some hostile work environments, it can actually turn into a team game (inter-departmental competition), or even a competitive game (intra-departmental competition). I’ve been in all of these types of companies, and the co-op ones are obviously the best, especially the ones that care more about the elevation of the team over individual success.
In the military, it’s very much a team game. You are clearly on the same team, and if you don’t cooperate with your team, you will (likely) lose. Obviously, with military — particularly in war — there can be actual life and death at stake, which elevates this to an extreme level.