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We systematically analyze the role of social comparison processes in organizations. Specifically, we describe how social comparison processes have been used to explain six key areas of organizational inquiry: (1) organizational justice, (2) performance appraisal, (3) virtual work environments, (4) affective behavior in the workplace, (5) stress, and (6) leadership. Additionally, we describe how unique contextual factors in organizations offer new insight into two widely studied sub-processes of social comparison, acquiring social information and thinking about that information. Our analyses underscore the merit of integrating organizational phenomena and social comparison processes in future research and theory.

Customer service representatives ( N =270) were underpaid for completing an hour-long questionnaire after working hours. They were told that the payment came either from the company itself or from a group of individual managers. Participants were given an opportunity to steal by being allowed to take their payment from a bowl of pennies under conditions in which they believed that the actual amount they took could not be detected. Employees who had attained Kohlberg's conventional level of moral development refrained from stealing money when they worked in an office that had an ethics program in place. However, those at the preconventional level of development and who worked at an office without an ethics program stole from their employers. By contrast, participants who believed that the money came from individual managers refrained from stealing under any conditions. These results are explained in terms of the person-by-situation interactionist approach to ethical behavior. Their practical implications are discussed as well.

Three experiments were conducted to examine subjects’ impressions of the performance of employees believed to be new to their jobs. Experiment 1 was a laboratory experiment in which 88 undergraduate students evaluated the performance of an instructor giving a lecture. Experiment 2 was a naturalistic field experiment in which 118 shoppers at a discount store evaluated the performance of the employees who bagged their orders. Finally, Experiment 3 was a field experiment in which 69 people responding to a telephone survey evaluated the performance of the interviewer. In all three experiments, participants who were not adversely affected by the workers’ job performance evaluated the workers more highly when they were believed to be new than when they had no knowledge of workers’ experience. In this case, the positive impressions sought by identifying one's newness were observed. These effects were also found among subjects rating workers who performed their jobs well despite their new status, providing evidence of an augmentation effect. However, subjects who were adversely affected by the workers’ actions evaluated workers lower when they were believed to be new than when they had no knowledge of workers’ experience. As such, the desired impression management effects backfired. The practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Members of high-school swim teams (n = 120) swam a 100-yard freestyle either as members of a four-person relay team or as individuals swimming alone. In all cases, a performance time goal established in pretesting to be perceived as difficult, but acceptable, was announced by the coaches (i.e., the desired time to swim the required distance by either an individual or by the relay team as a whole). Further announced was a punishment threat for failing to meet this standard—a number of penalty laps established in pretesting to be perceived as either a severe threat, a moderate threat, or no threat. Consistent with previous research on the social loafing effect, it was found that individuals in groups performed worse (i.e., swam slower) than individuals performing alone under conditions in which punishment threats were not issued. In contrast, when substandard performance was threatened with punishment, group performance improved, and the social loafing effect was attenuated. The implications and limitations of these findings for maximizing task performance are discussed.