The experience of being envied at work: How being envied shapes employee feelings and motivation

Abstract

We develop and test a theoretical framework delineating the dual affective and motivational experiences arising from perceptions of being envied in the workplace. We theorize that being envied can be pleasantly or unpleasantly experienced with opposite downstream effects on motivation and job performance. We test our model in two field studies using a sample of government employees (Study 1) and a sample of employees in the financial industry (Study 2). Our results indicate that being envied can elicit unpleasant mood and anxiety that influence work engagement and job performance in negative ways. In addition, we found that positive emotional experiences from being envied bolster work engagement and performance through positive mood but not pride. Implications of our findings are discussed.

Your Co-author Received 150 Citations: Pride, but Not Envy, Mediates the Effect of System-Generated Achievement Messages on Motivation

“…We found that pride mediated the effect of achievements on motivation. The link between pride and motivation has been demonstrated in related domains ( Williams and DeSteno, 2008 ; Hofmann and Fisher, 2012 ; Lee et al, 2017 ), but the full mediation from system-generated social media posts on personal achievements via pride on motivation has not been shown before. Since pride was significantly higher in the own achievement group than in the other two conditions, we interpret it as pride stemming from one’s own achievement.…”

“…To our knowledge, no studies have tested the mediating role of pride on motivation, although some authors speculated that positive affect might be a mediator ( Delin and Baumeister, 1994 ). There are, however, studies showing that pride can increase perseverance ( Williams and DeSteno, 2008 ), goal importance ( Hofmann and Fisher, 2012 ) and work engagement ( Lee et al, 2017 ). It might thus be that personal achievements lead to higher motivation via a mediating role of pride.…”

The Impact of Being Envied on Work Engagement:A Test of the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping

“…Although envied employees may experience two completely opposite emotions, when being envied causes unpleasantness, it will cover up and gradually replace shortterm positive emotions, and affect employees' work engagement in a negative way [3]. On the one hand, when employees perceive themselves as the target of another person's envy, they not only experience tension and anxiety, but also have to consider coping strategies, which will consume a lot of time and energy.…”

“…Considering that one's energy is limited, when employees are invested too much in workplace envy, the vitality and vigor in work will be reduced accordingly. On the other hand, some employees may take the initiative to reduce work engagement in order to avoid being the "target" of others' attacks [3]. In addition, Ma, Huang and Zhu (2014) also found that interpersonal relationship pressure will negatively affect the performance of employees.…”

“…Whether task assignment, job changes, salary adjustment, or leader-member exchange, many events in the workplace will induce workplace envy [1]. Some studies have found that the envied people will have the ambivalent affective experience [2,3], but few scholars have delved into behavioral responses of the being envied [1,4]. Therefore, Exline (2013), Liu (2018) and other scholars called for changing mind and exploring deeply what behavioral responses of the being envied may have, what factors will affect these behavioral responses, and whether different coping styles have different effects [1,2].…”