Passage Summary: Managers use competition to boost work, but if one person is a clear winner, everyone else gets stressed and doubts themselves, which ruins the whole point.

Conclusion: Stiff competition among employees can actually result in lower overall performance.

Reasoning: When one employee is clearly better than the rest, the other employees experience anxiety and self-doubt.

Analysis: The argument has a clear 'missing link' between the psychological state of the employees (anxiety and self-doubt) and the ultimate outcome (undermined performance). To make this argument logically airtight, we must assume that these specific negative feelings—anxiety and self-doubt—are sufficient to decrease performance. Look for an answer that explicitly connects these internal feelings to a decline in external productivity.