Discovering the Impact of Employee Envy on Career Success in Pakistan's IT Sector: The Role of Employee Engagement and Servant Leadership

Abstract

Literature dominantly studies the relationship of positive emotions with positive behaviors and positive work-related outcomes and largely ignores how negative emotions influence individual and organizational outcomes. More specifically, this study examines how negative emotions such as employee envy influence individual career success directly and indirectly. This study explores the complex relationships between employee envy, employee engagement, career success, and servant leadership. Based on affective event theory, this study examines whether employee envy (malicious and benign) positively affects career success (career commitment and career satisfaction) using employee engagement as a mediator and servant leadership as a moderator. Based on the affective event theory, this study employs structural equation modeling techniques to explore relationships between employee envy (benign and malicious), employee engagement at work, and career success. We further extend this study by examining the moderating effects of servant leadership on employee envy (benign and malicious) on career success mediated by employee engagement at work. A cross-sectional research design with a survey approach is adapted to collect data from information technology (IT) professionals from the software development companies. This study employs structural equation modeling techniques to analyze the complex relationships between employee envy (benign and malicious) and career success, where servant leadership is a moderating variable. Results of this study show that employee engagement mediates employee envy (benign and malicious) positively and negatively with career success (career satisfaction and career commitment). Further, servant leadership strengthens the relationships between employee envy (benign) and employee engagement while it dampens the negative relationships between malicious envy and employee x engagement. This study benefits organizations and human resources professionals in devising policies and practices to address emerging issues of employee envy to retain the best talent and maintain their performance at optimal levels that contribute towards employee career success and organizational growth.