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Apr 10

Game On: An Exploration of Perceived Environmental Competitiveness at Work, Its Antecedents, and Its Effects on Performance

Location:

Gerri C. LeBow Hall
205
3220 Market Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Perceived environmental competitiveness refers to the degree to which people view work situations as competitive. While competition in the workplace has been studied as an aspect of an organization’s structure (i.e., structural competition), an individual difference variable (i.e., competitiveness), or a relational derivation (i.e., rivalry), perceived environmental competitiveness is a relatively new construct that captures an employee’s perceptions of his or her work environment and the competition that exists within it. In this dissertation, I use social comparison theory and the transactional theory of stress to examine antecedents and consequences of perceived environmental competitiveness. First, I draw on social comparison theory to suggest that negatively interdependent rewards and winning orientation act as antecedents of perceived environmental competitiveness. Then, I extend the central tenets of social comparison theory by utilizing the transactional theory of stress to suggest that challenge and threat appraisals can help explain past contradictory and ambiguous findings on the relationship between competition and individual performance. More specifically, I propose that challenge and threat appraisals act as mediators. I suggest that perceived environmental competitiveness appraised as a challenge has a positive effect on individual performance, while perceived environmental competitiveness appraised as a threat negatively affects performance. I further propose that the individual difference construct of core self-evaluation influences whether an individual will appraise perceived environmental competitiveness as a challenge or a threat. I suggest that in comparison to employees who are lower on core self-evaluations, employees higher on core self-evaluation will be more likely to appraise perceived environmental competitiveness as a challenge and less likely to appraise it as a threat and therefore, more likely to increase their performance in response to the competition.

Many thanks to Blythe’s dissertation committee: • Committee Chair – Mary Mawritz, Ph.D. – Associate Professor – Drexel University • Committee Member: Lauren D’Innocenzo, Ph.D. – Assistant Professor – Drexel University • Committee Member: Jeffrey Greenhaus, Ph.D. – Emeritus Professor– Drexel University • Committee Member: Daniel Tzabbar, Ph.D. – Associate Professor – Drexel University • Committee Member: Gavin Kilduff, Ph.D. – Associate Professor – New York University

PhD Candidate