Free agency and organizational rankings: A social comparison perspective on signaling theory

•Psychological decision making methodology to understand how the movement of a free agent is influenced by the rankings of the home and prospective organizations.•Movement of free agents between two highly ranked organizations is more difficult than movement of free agents between two intermediately ranked organizations.•Empirical evidence is based on one study that probes free agency data from Major League Baseball and two additional studies that experimentally manipulate the ranking of the home team and the ranking of the recruiting team.•This manuscript attempts to integrate social comparison theory into signaling theory to explore the social comparison perspective on free agency.