Envying others is a common phenomenon in the life and workplace contexts. Although there are many records about envy in the religion, philosophy, and history books a long time ago, it is until recently that envy has been paid more and more attention by researchers of organizational science. Previous research has deepened researchers’ understanding of envy from multiple perspectives and disciplines, however, there are still some challenges that need to be resolved in organizational envy research. In order to advance research on envy in organizations, in this paper, we begin with an in-depth review about envy from three perspectives (i.e., proper perspective, subtype perspective, and unitary construct perspective), analyze the divergences between these perspectives related to nature of envy, envier’s response, and explain contradictory results. Based on the above analysis, we propose that future research should clarify the nature and measurement of envy, study the dyadic relationship between the envier and being envied, and integrate different perspectives of research on envy in organizations.
