Summary
By discussing “families” of moral emotions, we synthesize and review the moral emotions literature in an effort to advance organizational scholarship. First, we broadly discuss “what constitutes a moral emotion?” Second, we critically examine each family of moral emotions. We discuss key controversies and debates, particularly in terms of construct overlap, and provide recommendations. Third, we review scholarly work on each family of moral emotions in the workplace and offer ideas for future research. Finally, in our general future directions, we discuss a range of theoretical perspectives that can be used to advance the moral emotions literature in the management field.
We advance research on narcissism in the workplace by examining the effects of coworker narcissistic rivalry on focal employee emotional states and behavioral intentions. We rely on social function of emotions theory to explain why coworker narcissistic rivalry results in focal employee negative emotions. We then explain that the focal employee is likely to handle their negative emotions arising from coworker narcissistic rivalry differently depending on individual differences of bottom-line mentality (BLM), which captures a defensive competitive posture, or trait competitiveness, which captures an offensive competitive posture. Across three studies, our results generally support our predictions by revealing that the indirect effect of coworker narcissistic rivalry onto focal employees’ social undermining of that coworker (through focal employee negative emotions) is more strongly positive when the focal employee is higher in BLM, whereas the indirect effect of coworker narcissistic rivalry onto focal-employee-intended work-goal progress relative to the coworker (through focal employee negative emotions) is more strongly positive when the focal employee's trait competitiveness is lower.
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