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The study of emotions in organizational contexts has garnered increasing attention from scholars and practitioners over the past few decades. Most of them refer to emotions as complex reactions to stimuli involving physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experiences. Accordingly emotions shall be intended as discrete, intense yet short-lived experiences, while moods as longer and more diffuse, oftentimes lacking awareness of the eliciting stimulus.
Importance of Research on Emotions in Organization Studies
Research on emotions has employed a variety of methodological approaches, including ethnographic studies, narrative analyses, survey, and experience sampling methods. Below is an overview of theoretical and empirical perspectives that have advanced our understanding of the nature and roles of emotions in organizational contexts.
Initially, emotion research emerged primarily from the interpretive tradition in organizational studies. This makes sense because interpretive approaches focus on how people make meaning of their organizational experiences, and emotions are crucial to this meaning-making process. Early emotion researchers in this tradition looked at how people understand and interpret their emotional experiences at work. This is primarily why we binned this subfield under micro-level organizational behavior in organizations, Rack BB1, although as the below will show, this subfield crosses other levels of analysis.
But emotion research also has strong roots in critical theory (see Rack BQ). Critical scholars have examined how organizations control and commodify emotions, particularly through concepts like emotional labor. We discussed Arlie Hochschild’s groundbreaking work The Managed Heart (1983) in Episode 35, and her work showed how organizations may require workers to manage their emotions as part of their job duties and therefore how emotion management may become a form of organizational control. For example, most service workers and professionals ranging from flight attendants to teachers, doctors, and nurses establish norms of behavior that include controls over one’s emotions amidst visible displays of preferred or required emotions when dealing with others. Failure to adhere to these norms can result in termination or other sanctions.
Approaches other than interpretivist have also ventured into this area. Functionalist approaches to organizational studies have incorporated emotion research in studies of leadership, team dynamics, and organizational effectiveness to glean how emotions influence organizational outcomes and improve worker performance. Meanwhile, post-modern and post-structuralist approaches are examining how emotions are discursively constructed and how they relate to power and identity. The fact that emotion research crosses so many theoretical boundaries is interesting, and suggests that emotions may operate at multiple levels in organizations:
- At the individual level (how people experience and manage emotions)
- At the interpersonal level (how emotions shape relationships and interactions)
- At the organizational level (how emotions influence and are influenced by organizational structures), and
- At the societal level (how broader social and cultural factors shape organizational emotions)
Some Foundational Works on the Study of Emotions in Organization Studies
Especially following The Managed Heart, emotions and emotional labor became a hot topic from the 1980s onward. The following are but a few of the early works. One’s mileage may vary, shall we say…
Stephen Fineman (ed.), Emotion in Organizations. We start with this 1993 edited volume because it compiled a lot of ongoing work in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He brought together different theoretical perspectives and helped establish emotion as a legitimate field of organizational research. Contributions from many scholars including several mentioned below, would go on to shape the field.
Blake Ashforth & Ronald Humphrey, “Emotional Labor in Service Roles: The Influence of Identity” and “Emotion in the Workplace: A Reappraisal..”. In addition to Blake Ashforth’s chapter in Fineman’s volume above, we have two articles from Blake Ashforth and collaborator Ronald Humphrey to offer. In the first, Ashforth & Humphrey (1993) revealed how emotional labor relates to professional identity, demonstrating that emotional labor is not always as alienating as Hochschild suggested. Instead, it can be invigorating and motivating when the emotional labor aligns with how workers see themselves professionally. In the second, Ashforth & Humphrey (1995) “reappraised” the state of emotion research and criticized scholars for (perhaps unintentionally) treating emotions and rational thought as opposites, leading to a “pejorative” view of emotion as an inferior way of navigating the workplace. Instead, emotions are presented as integral and inseparable from organizational life.
Peter Frost, “Handling toxic emotions: New challenges for leaders and their organization“. Peter Frost’s work on so-called “toxic emotions” began in the 1990s, opening up new ways of thinking about how negative emotions spread through organizations. His research showed how certain organizational practices and leadership styles can create emotional harm that affects entire organizations. The 2004 article named here from Organizational Dynamics provides an easy-to-read summary of the various forms of negative emotions (i.e., the seven “IN”s of INtention, INcompetence, etc.) and how they manifest in and divide organizations.
Neal Ashkanasy and the multilevel analysis of emotions. We will conclude this section with Neal Ashkanasy who looked at emotions in leadership and who proposed a multilevel construct of emotions from “Level 1” individual to “Level 5” organization-wide with between-person, dyadic, and group/team in between (Ashkanasy & Bialkowski, 2021). The follows a considerable body of work by Ashkanasy on emotions and emotional intelligence.
Contemporary Areas of Research
Emotion Regulation (Individual and Interpersonal). Studies in emotion regulation examine how individuals manage and respond to their emotions or influence the emotions of others, recognizing that emotional experiences are often shared through social interactions. Examples of recent studies include identifying various strategies for emotion regulation such as cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression and their implications for mental health and well-being (Rahaman et al., 2023), and how individuals seek support from others to manage their emotional experiences (Zaki & Williams, 2013). There is also interest in emotional resilience in the face of organizational trauma such as how members of the organization collectively maintain their cool during extreme crises (during and after).
Cultural and Organizational Influences on Emotion. At higher levels of analysis, research has increasingly focused on how cultural and organizational contexts shape emotional experiences and regulation strategies. One study found that cultural differences significantly impact emotion regulatory processes particularly in observable expressive behaviors (Matsumoto et al., 2008). Another identified key topics in organizational emotion research, including mood theory and affective events theory, which explore how emotions influence employee behavior and organizational culture (Ashkanasy et al., 2002). This is certainly interesting now given how people could be responding to artificial intelligence systems and the gig economy (see Rack CD).
Emotions and Developmental Psychology. Scholars are also interesting in how emotions develop across the lifespan, particularly in children and adolescents, which in turn leads to how they cope in collective settings as adults. For example, ne study explored the impact of child maltreatment on emotion regulation abilities and socioemotional adjustment, highlighting the long-term effects of early emotional experiences on psychological development (Maughan & Cicchetti, 2002).
Emotions and Technology, Media, and Discourse. The intersection of emotions and technology is an emerging area of research, such as understanding how digital communication affects emotional experiences. Studies have explored how online interactions can influence emotional regulation and social connections, raising questions about the implications of technology for emotional well-being. Meanwhile, the emotionalization of contemporary media discourse is being studied to illuminate how emotions are expressed and manipulated through public means. For example, studies are highlighting the increasing importance of emotionality in contemporary culture and its implications for social interactions and collective behavior (Zappettini et al., 2021).
Curated List of Resources from Leading Publications
The following list of resources combines a list curated by Valerio Ianucci with articles provided to us by the Management Learning journal (with shout outs to Cara Reed from ML and our own Jarryd Daymond).
Elfenbein, H. A. (2007). Emotion in organizations: a review and theoretical integration. Academy of management annals, 1(1), 315-386.
This article offers a review of the research literature on emotion in organizations that chronologically develops along the emotion process, as currently conceived by psychologists. This process begins with an organizational actor who is exposed to an eliciting stimulus, registers that stimulus for its meaning, and experiences a feeling state and physiological changes, with downstream consequences for behaviors and cognition. These downstream consequences can result in externally visible behaviors and cues (e.g., facial expressions) that become, in turn, eliciting stimuli for interaction partners. Throughout this process emotional regulation can occur and might incorporate micro-level differences as well as macro-level norms.
Rafaeli, A., & Sutton, R. I. (1991). Emotional contrast strategies as means of social influence: Lessons from criminal interrogators and bill collectors. Academy of management journal, 34(4), 749-775.
The authors conduct a matched-samples inductive, qualitative study of occupations whose members are expected to wield influence over uncooperative targets-namely, criminal investigators and bill collectors. They found study participants conveying a mix of expressed emotions, both positive and negative, in order to influence others. This emotional contrast strategy, often popularized by the label “good cop, bad cop” exposes the target to both threatening and friendly stimuli. The resulting perceptual contrast that follows tends to accentuate the construed positiveness of displayed positive emotions and the construed negativeness of displayed negative emotions. Their findings extend scholarly understandings of how expressed emotions, particularly when contrasting, can be used as tools of social influence in organizational settings.
Morris, J. A., & Feldman, D. C. (1996). The dimensions, antecedents, and consequences of emotional labor. Academy of management review, 21(4), 986-1010.
In an era characterized by growing organizational efforts to direct and control how employees present themselves and display emotions to their clients. This article advances a nuanced conceptualization of this phenomenon, commonly referred to as emotional labor. Emotional labor exhibits four distinct dimensions: frequency of appropriate emotional display, attentiveness to required display rules, variety of emotions required to be displayed, and emotional dissonance generated as the result of having to express organizationally desired emotions not genuinely felt. In addition, the authors trace the macro-level antecedents (e.g., job characteristics, organizational culture) and micro-level consequences (e.g., job satisfaction) that the performance of emotional labor exposes employees to.
Barsade, S. G. (2002). The ripple effect: Emotional contagion and its influence on group behavior. Administrative science quarterly, 47(4), 644-675.
This article focuses on emotional contagion, a process in which a person or group influences the emotions or behavior of another person or group through the conscious or unconscious induction of emotion states and behavioral attitudes. The authors use a 2×2 experimental design the dimensions of emotional valence and activation level, and observe the performance of groups where a confederate enacts distinct mood conditions. They find that positive emotional contagion reduces conflict while leading individuals to greater cooperativeness and higher rating of peers’ performances. Accordingly, the authors conclude that emotional contagion serves as affective information, continuously influencing the emotional states, judgments, and behaviors of others around.
Related Episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast
111: Visible & Invisible Work – Susan Leigh Star
101: The Motivation to Work — Frederick Herzberg
91: Constructive Conflict – Mary Parker Follett
89: Administrative Behavior in Public Sector — Herbert Kaufman
88: Social Defenses Against Anxiety — Isabel Menzies
66: Workplace Isolation – Forester
61: Power & Influence in Organizations — Dan Brass
57: Reward Systems – Steven Kerr
Reflections on the “Human Capital Hoax”
39: Carnegie Mellon Series #4 – Organizational Choice
38: Socialization and Occupational Communities – Van Maanen
35: The Managed Heart – Arlie Hochschild
Related Resource Pages
Rack BA — Classic Organization and Management Theory
Rack BB1 – Organizational Behavior (Micro-Individual)
Rack BB2 — Organizational Behavior (Meso-Groups and Teams)
Rack BB3 — Organizational Behavior (Macro-Org/System)
Rack BC — Contingency Theory
Rack BD — Organizational Design
Rack BG — Organizational Development and Change
Rack BH – Human Dimension – Culture, Climate, Identity
Rack BI — Institution Theory
Rack BL — Leadership Theories
Rack BM – Modern Management Theories
Rack BQ — Postmodern and Critical Theories
Rack BS — Sociology & Anthropology
References
Ashforth, B. E., & Humphrey, R. H. (1993). Emotional labor in service roles: The influence of identity. Academy of management review, 18(1), 88-115.
Ashforth, B. E., & Humphrey, R. H. (1995). Emotion in the workplace: A reappraisal. Human Relations, 48(2), 97-125.
Ashkanasy, N., & Bialkowski, A. (2021, May 26). Emotions at work. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology. https://oxfordre.com/psychology/
Fong, C. T. (2006). The effects of emotional ambivalence on creativity. Academy of Management Journal, 49(5), 1016-1030.
Frost, P. J. (2004). Handling toxic emotions: New challenges for leaders and their organization. Organizational Dynamics, 33(2), 111-127.
Knight, A. P. (2015). Mood at the midpoint: Affect and change in exploratory search over time in teams that face a deadline. Organization Science, 26(1), 99-118.
Toubiana, M., & Zietsma, C. (2017). The message is on the wall? Emotions, social media and the dynamics of institutional complexity. Academy of Management Journal, 60(3), 922-953.
Irving, G., Wright, A. & Hibbert, P. (2019). Threshold concept learning: Emotions and liminal space transitions. Management Learning, 50(3), 355–373.
Iszatt-White, M. & Lenney, P. (2020). Enacting emotional labour in consultancy work: Playing with liminality and navigating power dynamics. Management Learning, 51(3), 314–335.
McMurray, R. (2021). Immersion, drowning, dispersion and resurfacing: Coping with the emotions of ethnographic management learning. Management Learning, 53(3), 439-459, doi: 10.1177/13505076211020456.
Shotter, J. & Tsoukas, H. (2014). Performing phronesis: On the way to engaged judgment. Management Learning, 45(4), 377–396.
Town, S., Donovan, M. C. J. & Beach, E. (2021). A “gestalt” framework of emotions and organizing: Integrating innate, constructed, and discursive ontologies. Management Learning, 52(5), 519-540.
Resources curated by Valerio Ianucci, includes items from previous list of readings provided by Management Learning journal.
The inclusion of external links is for informational purposes only and does not necessarily constitute endorsement by TAOP or any of its members.
Jump to: Importance | Foundational Works | Research Areas | Curated List of Articles | TAOP Resources | References
Rack BB1 (Micro-Level Behavioral Theories): Theories of Motivation | Emotions in Organizations (BB1.E) | Self-Determination Theory | Expectancy Theory | Personality Theories | Attribution Theory | Social Cognitive Theory
Aisle B (Major Theories): Classical Theories (BA) | Org. Behavior – Individual (BB1) | Org. Behavior – Groups & Teams (BB2) | Org. Behavior – Systems & Culture (BB3) | Contingency Theories (BC) | Org. Design (BD) | Org. Development & Change (BG) | Human Relations Theories (BH) | Institution Theories (BI) | Leadership Theories (BL) | Modern Management Perspectives (BM) | Postmodern & Critical Theories (BQ) | Sociology & Anthropology (BS)
Resources: Main Page | Research Methods (A) | Major Theories (B) | Issues and Contemporary Topics (C) | Professional Community (D)