Advances in Business-Related Scientific Research Journal (ABSRJ) 
Volume 1 (2010), Number 2 
CONCEPTUALIZING ENVY FOR BUSINESS RESEARCH 
Lorenz Graf 
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg 
Germany 
lgraf@lgraf.com 
Abstract 
Envy is a pervasive emotion that has found attention in various disciplines from philosophy, 
anthropology, evolutionary and social psychology to political thought. Surprisingly, it has not 
been extensively treated in business research even though it can affect a large variety of 
business-relevant phenomena ranging from individual workplace behavior to the theory of 
the firm. In the comparably rare cases where envy is treated in business research, the term 
is often defined loosely and used rather inconsistently. This limits the comparability of 
existing research and hinders the aggregation of findings. This conceptual paper attempts to 
clarify the concept of envy for business research from a situational perspective. Thereto, it 
integrates research on envy from various scientific disciplines and introduces a novel 
graphical notation to conceptually distinguish the four distinct notions of envy proper, benign 
envy, spite, and jealousy. Thereby, it lays the groundwork for further analysis of the 
phenomenon of envy in business research. 
Key Words: Envy, Jealousy, Conceptualization 
Topic Groups: Managerial and organizational cognition and psychology, Organizational 
behavior 
INTRODUCTION 
The “resentment emotion” (Ortony, Clore, & Collins, 1988, p. 99) of envy is one of the most 
pervasive (Lindholm, 2008) and has been concerning humans for a long time. A classical 
depiction of this motive can for example be found in the biblical narrative of Cain’s slaying of 
Abel, whom he envied for God’s favoritism (also see Schoeck, 1966, pp. 123–131 for a brief 
account of actual crimes committed from the motive of envy). Other objects of envy, that is 
the “features we envy in others” (Elster, 1991, p. 50) and which are normally not intrinsically 
good or bad and valued only inside a certain milieu (Harris & Salovey, 2008), can be 
everything from food, children, and health in peasant societies to fine homes and clothing in 
modern society (Foster, 1972). 
 
Not surprisingly, envy has long been a subject of debate in various disciplines from 
philosophy (see for example D’Arms & Kerr, 2008; Gillmann, 1996 or Schoeck, 1966 for an 
overview), anthropology (see for example Lindholm, 2008), and evolutionary (Hill & Buss, 
2008) and social psychology (Smith & Kim, 2007) to political thought (Russell, 1930; 
Schoeck, 1966) and economics (Zizzo, 2008; Kolm, 1995). However, it has not received 
significant attention in the management literature (Mishra, 2009), as have emotions in 
general (see Delgado-García & De La Fuente-Sabaté, 2010 for a review of the extant 
empirical work). 
 
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This is despite the fact that envy can have important influences on many topics relevant to 
management research. These topics range from individual workplace behavior (Vecchio, 
2000; Duffy, Shaw, & Schaubroeck, 2008; Mishra, 2009) to managerial decision making 
(Lister, 2001; Goel & Thakor, 2005; Moran & Schweitzer, 2008), consumer behavior (Young 
& Rubicam EMEA; Belk, 2008) and even the theory of the firm (Nickerson & Zenger, 2008). 
 
It seems that one of the problems of management research on envy is that different 
research projects use different terms and conceptualizations of envy, be they explicit or only 
implicit. This limits the comparability of existing research and hinders the aggregation of 
findings. Some researchers are generally skeptical whether an unanimously accepted 
definition of what envy constitutes exactly will ever emerge (Harris & Salovey, 2008). 
However, the problem is not so much whether everyone will agree to the same meaning of 
the term “envy”, but rather everyone making explicit their understanding of the term. To 
facilitate this, this paper attempts to conceptualize envy and related phenomena for 
management research. 
SITUATIONAL CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF ENVY AND RELATED PHENOMENA 
Three different ways of interpreting envy are conceivable. One can either take a 
dispositional, a phenomenological, or a situational approach (Salovey, 1991). The 
dispositional approach understands envy as a person’s sensitivity to envy-provoking 
situations and their tendency to harbor envious feelings. The phenomenological approach 
focuses on the specific feelings that people encounter when experiencing envy. The 
situational approach, in contrast, centers on the question which kinds of situations can 
arouse envy in individuals and what their desires in such situations are. 
 
For most practical applications in a managerial context, the questions of individual envy 
propensity and the precise emotions felt by someone experiencing envy are subordinate to 
the question of which situations actually constitute envious situations. This is because until it 
is clarified which situation actually qualifies as involving envy, individual differences and the 
emotions felt are not relevant to management research. Consequentially, the situational 
approach to envy seems useful for management research and will hence be used in this 
paper. 
 
When one disentangles the different ideas of envy that can be found in the literature, 
principally four different situations and corresponding terms describing them emerge. These 
are envy proper, benign envy, spite, and jealousy. Figure 1 introduces a novel graphical 
notation to display the four different concepts in terms of an interaction between two 
individuals P and Q with a current and a desired respectively feared potential future situation 
each. The size of the bars indicates the outcome of a social comparison performed by P 
using Q as a comparison standard. The following details these conceptions integrating 
research from various disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, and economics. 
 
First, there is what is being referred to as “envy proper” (Smith & Kim, 2007, p. 47), 
“malicious envy” (Smith & Kim, 2008, p. 4; Parrott, 1991, pp. 9–12), or “destructive” or 
“black envy” (Grolleau, Mzoughi, & Sutan, 2006, p. 5). It describes the phenomenon that a 
person who made a disadvantageous comparison to another person has a desire to remove 
his or her relative disadvantage by making the comparison person worse off to overcome his 
or her feeling of inferiority (see illustration 1 in Figure 1). Elster maintains that such envy 
comes in two forms, namely weak and strong envy. Weak envy, on one hand, implies that 
the disadvantaged person enjoys seeing the other person’s welfare diminished but is not 
willing to incur a cost for this to happen. Strong envy, on the other hand, implies that a 
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Volume 1 (2010), Number 2 
person is willing to incur a personal cost in order to have the other’s welfare reduced (Elster, 
1991). The latter constitutes the more common case and represents a trade-off between 
absolute and relative standing. This is clearly what scholars have in mind when they argue 
that “Envious agents 
 
Figure 1: Situational conception of envy and its cognates 
Envy properr r Spiteit
Benign envyi Jealousyl
1
2
3
4
P desires
P Q P Q
P desires
P Q P Q
P fears
P Q P Q
P desires
P Q P Q
 
 
 
want to be better more than they want to be better off” (Goel & Thakor, 2005, p. 2262). An 
example for strong envy proper would be a company owner who exits a joint venture even 
though it was profitable for him only because the joint venture partner made even greater 
gains. 
 
Second, there is what is called “benign envy” (Smith & Kim, 2008, p. 3, Smith & Kim, 2007, 
p. 47), “nonmalicious envy” (Parrott, 1991, pp. 9–12), “competitive” or “white envy” 
(Grolleau et al., 2006, p. 5), or “emulation” (Elster, 1991, p. 49; Miceli & Castelfranchi, 2007, 
p. 473). This concept refers to the reaction of a person that realizes his or her inferiority as 
compared to another person and develops the desire to eliminate this discrepancy by 
improving his or her own position with regard to the dimension of comparison (see 
illustration 2 in Figure 1). An example would be a manager that finds another person to be a 
better public speaker and then starts practicing to improve his or her public speaking skills. 
Some scholars, however, argue that this phenomenon does not really represent envy, as 
true envy does require some form of ill will directed towards the envied person (Smith 
& Kim, 2007; Miceli & Castelfranchi, 2007), rather than only a “longing” for the object of 
envy (Smith & Kim, 2007, p. 47; D’Arms & Kerr, 2008, pp. 45–48). 
 
Third, there is the phenomenon of “spite” (Elster, 1991, p. 54), sometimes also referred to 
as “nastiness” (Abbink & Sadrieh, 2009, p. 306). Spite is the desire of one person to make 
another person worse off not to regain parity, but to gain superiority. While envy wants to 
eliminate the other’s superiority, spite wishes for his or her inferiority (see illustration 3 in 
Figure 1). Normally, envy tends to bring spite with it (Elster, 1991). Similar to envy, spite can 
also be weak and strong, depending on whether the one person is willing to incur a cost to 
see the other person be made inferior (Elster, 1991). An example for weak spite would be a 
situation in which a manager is happy to see another colleague being demoted, while at the 
same time not being willing to incur a personal cost to make it happen. 
 
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Volume 1 (2010), Number 2 
Until now, it has always been assumed that the superiority or inferiority of one of the 
comparing individuals can be changed without explicitly transferring a good or property from 
the envied individual to the envying individual (this is possible because envy is not normally 
considered to presuppose a zero-sum view of the world; Elster, 1991). Some authors, 
however, have included the requirement in their definitions of envy that envy has to strive 
for the transfer of something between the persons (probably because they were thinking in 
terms of envy in romantic relationships, where the object of envy is singular, than in 
economic terms, where object of envy normally can be obtained without removing it from 
the other party; Salovey, 1991). A similar distinction is made when the terms “general envy” 
and “particular envy” are used (Rawls, 1999, p. 466). Whenever the object of envy that 
causes the discrepancy in standing between the two persons comparing is unique, envy and 
spite naturally coincide. Such an object can for example be a position in a ranking. If the 
person ranked second envies the person ranked first, the desire to gain first place naturally 
requires the other person to lose first place. 
 
Fourth, there is the concept of jealousy. Although the word is oftentimes used synonymously 
with envy in colloquial language, it refers to a genuinely distinct concept (Foster, 1972). 
While envy relates to the desire to remove someone’s superiority, jealousy refers to the fear 
of losing one’s superiority to somebody else (Miceli & Castelfranchi, 2007; Smith & Kim, 
2007); see illustration 4 in Figure 1. The two phenomena are interlinked in that when one 
person realizes that he or she is being envied, he or she might become jealous for that very 
reason. It is apparent that, even while envy and jealousy may be very similar in the feelings 
experienced (albeit in different intensities), they differ in that they occur in different 
situations (Salovey, 1991). It should be noted that jealousy is always the fear that the object 
of jealousy is being transferred from the jealous person to another, not merely being lost by 
one person. For example, one does not get jealous when the promised promotion gets 
cancelled, but only when the threat arises that somebody else might get it instead. 
CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS 
This paper was motivated by the fact that while envy has been treated extensively in various 
scientific disciplines, it has been comparably neglected in management research. Since this is 
likely to be partially due to a confusion regarding the specific concepts associated with the 
term “envy”, this paper set out to develop situational conceptualizations of envy-related 
phenomena for management research. 
 
Thereto, the four distinct concepts of envy proper, benign envy, spite, and jealousy were 
identified through integration of literature from various scientific disciplines. Additionally, the 
four different concepts were illustrated and contrasted using a novel graphical notation. 
Thereby, this paper lays the groundwork for further analysis of the phenomenon of envy in 
business settings. 
 
Several opportunities for future research exist. The framework which was proposed in this 
article could for example be used to categorize current business-related research on envy. 
This might allow the identification of research gaps with regard to envy in business. Another 
avenue for further research could be to further explore the exact psychological mechanisms 
driving the phenomena addressed in this contribution. Social comparison theory could, for 
example, provide such a theoretical basis (Festinger, 1954). 
 
This paper’s contribution to science and practice lies in the provision of a structured 
vocabulary which is hoped to further educated practical discussions and productive academic 
scholarship on the topic of envy in management. Specifically, managers may use this 
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vocabulary to address issues related to envy in the workplace, e.g. when discussing 
compensation schemes or information systems which may trigger envy and related 
phenomena. Theorists can benefit from the clear delineations set forth in this paper insofar 
as it provides them with a framework to distinguish emotions and patterns of behavior that 
were previously lumped together or only ill-defined. Therefore, this research offers insights 
that are meaningful from both a practical and a theoretical perspective. 
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