A functional model of workplace envy and job performance: When do employees capitalize on envy by learning from envied targets?

We integrate the social functional view of emotions with recent developments in workplace envy research to develop and test a novel theoretical framework showing that envious employees can use their envy to promote self-enhancing actions rather than other-diminishing behaviors. We theorize that enviers’ CSE and friendship ties will attenuate the extent to which enviers undermine envied targets and promote the extent to which enviers actively learn from their envied targets through observational learning and advice seeking. Using two data from round-robin surveys of employees in cosmetic (Study 1) and financial (Study 2) industries we show that (1) while enviers undermine envied targets, they also capitalize on their own envy by seeking advice from the targets; and (2) enviers who have higher CSE and friendship with envied targets are more likely to seek advice from targets; higher CSE also decreases the likelihood of undermining targets. We found limited support for the role of envy in triggering enviers’...