Browsing by Subject "Social comparison"

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The double-edged dynamics of social comparisons: micro-level drivers of employees’ knowledge behaviors
(2025) Rinker, Laura; Fasbender, Ulrike
Amidst worldwide developments such as globalization, workforce aging, and the accelerating pace of advancements, organizations depend on effective knowledge flows to maintain competitive and enable innovation. Because interpersonal knowledge exchange is central to organizational knowledge management, organizations must gain an understanding of what drives individual knowledge behaviors. This cumulative dissertation offers a timely investigation of social comparisons as critical socio-cognitive underpinnings of such knowledge behaviors. The underlying research seeks to deepen the understanding of the micro-level drivers of knowledge behaviors by tracing them back to employees’ social comparison experiences. The first manuscript combines the identification-contrast model of social comparisons with informal workplace learning theorizing to examine the social-cognitive roots of workplace learning. Specifically, it considers how employees’ emotionally charged (un)favorability perceptions of their social comparisons guide their daily engagement in narrow and broad informal learning behaviors through reflection processes focusing on successes or failures. The hypothesized model is tested using a ten-day experience sampling study (NLevel 2 = 175 employees, NLevel 1 = 1,256 employee-day observations). Results demonstrate that the different types of reflection translate both favorable and unfavorable social comparison experiences into learning-oriented knowledge behaviors. The findings additionally stress the moderating influence of organizational support. The second manuscript joins social comparison and stress appraisal theories to investigate the ambivalent potential of upward comparisons as work stressors. Drawing from the challenge-hindrance stress framework, it probes a dual pathway model connecting upward social comparisons with different knowledge behaviors through an approach pathway (via challenge appraisal) and an avoidance pathway (via hindrance appraisal). The hypotheses are tested based on two experimental studies with employees (NStudy 1 = 206, NStudy 2 = 414). Finding no support for the approach pathway, the research identifies hindrance appraisals as a cognitive mechanism to explain how upward comparisons harm knowledge flows. However, these adverse effects are mitigated by an between the focal employee and the comparison target. The third manuscript integrates social comparison frameworks and affective events theory to examines the daily emotional complexities of social comparisons. It seeks to clarify how the multiple facets of daily social comparisons can lead to both facilitative and harmful behavioral reactions, probing the mediating effect of discrete social comparison-induced emotions. The findings from a ten-day experience sampling study (NLevel 2 = 155 employees, NLevel 1 = 960 employee-day observations) demonstrate that daily social comparisons are linked to knowledge behaviors via inspiration, envy, and sympathy. In addition, the results reveal the complementary effects of the two cardinal social comparison axes (i.e., horizontal and vertical). In conclusion, this dissertation establishes social comparisons as a multi-faceted socio-cognitive antecedent of employees’ knowledge behaviors, providing novel insights into cognitive and emotional underpinnings and multi-level boundary conditions. Offering a more holistic perspective of social comparisons and their impact on knowledge behaviors, this work opens avenues for scholars to develop a deeper understanding of the socio-cognitive roots of organizational behavior. Moreover, the findings equip practitioners with actionable insights to utilize social comparisons as micro-level drivers, instead of barriers, of knowledge flows.