Abstract
AbstractRegret is a remarkably common occurrence and a fundamental part of life. Defined as ‘the emotion that we experience when realising or imagining that our current situation would have been better, if only we had decided differently’, regret comes along with unpleasant feelings and a wish to undo one's present circumstance. Characterised by self‐blame for a poorly made decision, regret materialises following a comparison with a perceived superior alternative outcome, otherwise known as upward counterfactual thinking. Because it originates from this cognitive process, academic analysis of regret developed alongside the scholarship on counterfactual thinking, which burgeoned from the 1980s. However, in the work domain, the study of regret has remained elusive. In the following, we provide an overview of the concept's scholarly study, both more generally and then specifically in work and organisational study. After introducing the articles in this special section, we outline some further avenues for scholarly work on regret in the context of work and organisations.
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