Benign Envy and Creativity in the Workplace

Innovation is the driver of organizational behavior which can create competitive advantages for many organizations and stems from individual creative performance. Individual creative performance has its foundation in novel idea production, which in this study is proposed to be elicited through the emotion of benign envy. Benign envy occurs from an upward social comparison and triggers a challenge orientation in individuals. This challenge orientation is proposed to increase individual creative performance in the workplace. A model for individual creative performance is proposed and tested by using structural equation modeling (SEM). Two hundred participants filled out an online survey posted on SurveyMonkey. The data collected explored the structural relationships between the variables in the proposed model for individual creative performance in the workplace. No support was found for the above structural relationships after controlling for the effects of openness to experience, conscientiousness, and creative self-efficacy. A regression analysis was ran, which resulted in the linear combination of self-reported levels of the combined predictor variables accounting for 61% of the variance in individual creative performance. The strongest individual predictor for individual creative performance was intrinsic motivation, followed by openness to experience, malicious envy, and creative self-efficacy. Benign envy and malicious envy had different effects on individual creative performance, which provides further support that envy should be separated into two distinct constructs. The results of this study can assist leaders and managers in better understanding benign envy and how it can be fostered to create higher levels of employee creative performance that can increase overall organizational performance.