You may be familiar with stories (even from your own experience) of employees who choose to denigrate or subtly sabotage their fellow employees

You may be familiar with stories (even from your own experience) of employees who choose to denigrate or subtly sabotage their fellow employees rather than focusing on how they themselves can be better or more productive. Often, a company may notice not that a single employee behaves this way, but that many, most, or all of them do. It seems obvious that spending time and energy figuring out how to make other employees appear worse, instead of spending that time and energy to make yourself better, is harmful to the company, but the behavior continues to be seen among large groups of workers. How might game theory offer an explanation for this behavior?