Envy effects on conflict dynamics in supervised work groups

Abstract At the end of last century, chaos theory principles have helped organizational theorists to analyze several aspects organizations and account for their dynamic evolution. However, most contributions remained relegated as qualitative discussions phenomena. In this paper, starting from effort allocations subordinates in supervised work groups which were observed a human participants interaction, we found evidence nonlinear relation between colleagues’ effort. order explain large variability behavior observed, consider those activated by unfavorable social comparison propose dynamical model. A theoretical model based on empirical results appears be powerful modeling repeated interactions group. Research intervention design should focus individual intolerance beliefs about reciprocal capacities subordinates, which, according our study, appear play key role inefficiency equilibria groups.