Turning the envious boss into a friend or a foe: The emotional and behavioral reactions to being envied by one’s supervisor and its impact on leader–member exchange.

In recent years, research on workplace envy has expanded beyond its traditional focus on peer-to-peer envy to examine the envy felt by supervisors toward their subordinates (termed as "downward envy"). We contribute to this emerging research stream by examining the emotional and behavioral reactions of employees who are targets of such downward envy, as well as the relational consequences that follow. We tested our model, which is based on the appraisal theory of emotions, across two studies-a multisource, multiphase field study and a vignette-based experimental study-that offer converging evidence in its support. Aligned with our theory, we found that employees appraise downward envy as a relational threat to, or a relational opportunity for, their leader-member exchange relationship, which results in the emotions of relationship anxiety and hope, respectively. These emotions, in turn, elicit contrasting employee behaviors toward the supervisor: anxiety motivates avoidance, while hope encourages approach-oriented citizenship behaviors, which, respectively, have a negative and positive effect on the quality of the leader-member exchange relationship. Furthermore, employees' sense of power with respect to their supervisor was found to mitigate the anxiety-based pathway but played a limited role in influencing the hope-based pathway. Our research advances the nascent literature on downward envy and leader-member exchange instability and also offers practical insights for managing downward envy in organizations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).