High performers in the shadow: The adverse effect of star employees on their peers

Star employees are pivotal to organizational success and significantly influence their peers. Previous studies on this topic often explore the attributes of stars and nonstars in isolation. Using social comparison theory, our study posits that as employees' performance approaches that of star employees, nonstar employees become more likely to compare themselves with stars, thereby increasing their sense of psychological entitlement. The increase in entitlement is likely to promote workplace deviance and decrease workplace well-being. We further propose that team interdependence amplifies the relationship between the star-nonstar performance gap and psychological entitlement. When team interdependence is high, the influence of the star-nonstar performance gap on nonstars' psychological entitlement and the mediating effects of psychological entitlement become more significant. We conducted four studies including two field surveys and two experiments to test our hypotheses. The results indicated that employees who exhibit small performance gaps are more adversely affected by stars than other employees, thus offering a more nuanced understanding of star employees' influence within organizations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).