Dr. Khan Presents at Academy of Management, Boston

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Dr. Khan Presents at Academy of Management, Boston

August 13, 2012

Dr. Abdul Karim Khan of Suleman Dawood School of Business (SDSB), Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), presented his research paper titled “Benign envy and malicious envy: Relative deprivation, anomie and perceived opportunity” at 2012 Annual meeting of Academy of Management (AoM), held from August 3-7, 2012 in Boston (USA).

Dr. Khan co-authored the research along with Chris M. Bell, York University Canada, Samina Quratulain, SDSB, LUMS. AOM which is one of the leading professional associations for scholars dedicated to creating and disseminating knowledge about management and organisations. Founded in 1936 by two professors, the AOM is the oldest and largest scholarly management association in the world. Today, the Academy is the professional home for 19392 members from 109 nations.

This research empirically supports the distinction between two types of envy, benign and malicious envy, that have culturally specific terms in South Asian culture. The results supported hypotheses that the two types of envy are related to different motivations and behavioural intentions. Study 1 demonstrated that antecedents of benign envy and malicious envy led to distinct theoretically predicted patterns of feelings, thoughts, and action tendencies in a Pakistani sample. Study 2 showed that the culturally specific terms for benign and malicious envy are related to similar patterns responses of ‘moving up’ and ‘pulling down’ intentions, respectively. Benign envy was related to intentions to work hard on the comparison dimension.

Further, blocked opportunity on the comparison dimension influenced intentions to work hard on alternative performance dimensions when benign envy was low rather than high, supporting our contention that benign envy is a conformist attitude, in the sense of the acceptance of goals and means that promotes strong internal motivation. On the other hand, blocked opportunity qualified the relationship between malicious envy and behavioural ‘pulling down’ intentions of derogating envied other. Study 3 replicated the results of study 2 in a field sample.