Social comparisons are one of the most ubiquitous behaviors that individuals, groups, and firms undertake. In particular, social comparison theory is based upon the premise that actors are motivated to engage in comparisons and that decisions throughout this process impact employees’ core self-evaluations, team relations, executives’ behaviors, firm prestige, and more. However, despite the prevalence of the phenomenon—and thereby the frequent application of the theory in organizational studies—a synopsis of the theory’s underpinnings and extant findings remains absent. Here, we present a state-of-the-art review that summarizes the theory’s history and mechanics and critically examines how social comparison theory has been applied in organizational studies across multiple levels of analysis. In particular, we identify several problems within the literature, including patterns of theoretical imprecision when applying the theory, lopsided attention paid to the micro-level of analysis, and an underappreciation of subjective comparisons. In addition to discussing the extant literature and common methodological approaches, we present a simplified model of social comparisons. Based on this new theory-building, we discuss ways the field can move forward to reconcile some of the identified problems.

中文翻译：

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比较是人之常情：组织环境中社会比较理论的回顾


社会比较是个人、团体和公司最普遍的行为之一。特别是，社会比较理论的前提是，行为者有动机进行比较，整个过程中的决策会影响员工的核心自我评价、团队关系、高管行为、公司声誉等。然而，尽管这种现象很普遍，并且该理论在组织研究中经常得到应用，但对该理论基础和现有发现的概要仍然缺乏。在这里，我们提出了最先进的评论，总结了该理论的历史和机制，并批判性地审视了社会比较理论如何在多个分析层次的组织研究中应用。特别是，我们发现了文献中的几个问题，包括应用理论时理论不精确的模式、对微观分析层面的不平衡关注以及对主观比较的低估。除了讨论现有文献和常见方法之外，我们还提出了社会比较的简化模型。基于这种新的理论构建，我们讨论了该领域可以向前发展以解决一些已确定的问题的方法。