Envy at Work and in Organizations

Competition for resources, recognition, and favorable outcomes are all facts of life in professional settings. When one falls short in comparison to colleagues or subordinates, feelings of envy may arise. Fueled by inferiority, hostility and resentment, envy is both ubiquitous and painful. Will employees "level up" with their envied counterpart through self-improvement behaviors? Or will they "level down" through sabotage and undermine their peers and subordinates in the process?

Envy at Work and in Organizations aims to determine the direction workplace envy takes. Contributors are drawn from many countries and from an extraordinary range of disciplines to share their insight: experimental social psychologists offer insights from lab studies, psychoanalytical scholars emphasize unconscious processes, organizational psychologists describe groundbreaking research from disparate work settings, and cross-cultural psychologists reveal the variety of ways that envy can emerge as a function of cultures as wide-ranging as the Japanese school system to the fascinating structure of the Israeli kibbutzim. Work and insight from behavioral economists and organizational consultants is also included.

Envy at Work and in Organizations is a valuable, distinctive resource for both scholars and practitioners looking to grasp the nature of envy. Edited by Richard H. Smith, Ugo Merlone, and Michelle K. Duffy, this volume will help readers understand the factors that help individuals and organizations overcome envy and transform it into something positive to promote workplace well-being.

Richard H. Smith is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Kentucky. His research is on social emotions, such as awe, envy, and schadenfreude. He is the editor of Envy: Theory and Research (Oxford University Press, 2008) and the author of The Joy of Pain: Schadenfreude and the Dark Side of Human Nature (Oxford University Press, 2013).

Ugo Merlone is a Professor of Conflict Management and Negotiation at the University of Torino. His research focuses on social dilemmas and complex dynamics in organizations. His most recent book is Negoziare in modo efficace (il Mulino, 2015). His work has appeared in Organization Science; the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organizations; Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Science. He has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University, the London School of Economics and the Unversidad de Chile.

Michelle K. Duffy is the Board of Overseers Professor of Work and Organizations in the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on well-being at work, emotions, and antisocial behavior. She is currently an Associate Editor at the Journal of Applied Psychology. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Applied Psychology, the Academy of Management Journal, the Journal of Management, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.