The Good, the Not So Bad, and the Ugly of Competitive Human Resource Practices: A Multidisciplinary Conceptual Framework

Human resource (HR) practices used to inject internal competition into the workplace are the subject of heated debates in business practice; this is however not the case in the field of human resource management (HRM) research. In this article, we first augment previous research in the field to offer an initial conceptualization of competitive HR practices. We then develop a conceptual framework that explains the processes and conditions that drive and determine the impact of competitive HR practices on employees at work. Blending insights from social comparison theory and uncertainty research, we theorize a set of conditions that specify when competitive HR practices unfold their dark side, and when the not so bad or even a good side of competitive HR practices might emerge.