Emotions in Organizations (BB1.E)

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Jump to: Importance | Foundational Works | Research Areas | Curated List of Articles | TAOP Resources | References

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 quarterly47(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

In this episode, we focus on the emerging discourse from the 1990s on how automated systems would potentially change the very meaning of work. The discussion is on a seminal work of Susan Leigh Star and co-author Anselm Strauss, “Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice: The Ecology of Visible and Invisible Work,” published in CSCW’s flagship journal, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, in 1999. The article focuses on the challenges and risks of automating work processes without due consideration of all the invisible work done in an organization that systems designers might overlook …

101: The Motivation to Work — Frederick Herzberg

Frederick Herzberg’s “The Motivation to Work” presents the results of over 200 interviews with engineers and accountants working in the Pittsburgh area regarding what satisfied and dissatisfied them on the job. They would find that factors leading to satisfaction, such as achievement and performance, were very different than those leading to dissatisfaction, such as company policies or relationships with co-workers and managers. The result became known as Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory of Job Satisfaction, also known as the motivator-hygiene theory …

91: Constructive Conflict – Mary Parker Follett

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89: Administrative Behavior in Public Sector — Herbert Kaufman

This month’s episode examines a classic study in public administration, Herbert Kaufman’s “The Forest Ranger: A Study in Administrative Behavior,” published in 1960. The U.S. Forest Service was a widely distributed organization with its many Rangers individually assigned to manage large tracts of public land. It would have been easy for the Forest Service to lose control and fragment, but it did not. Kaufman’s study showed how and why the various techniques used by the Forest Service kept the Rangers integrated under a common vision …

88: Social Defenses Against Anxiety — Isabel Menzies

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66: Workplace Isolation – Forester

In this episode (which took place in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic), we explore the social and emotional impacts to the worker on having to work from home. For some workers, the concept of telework is hardly new. But many other vocations place great value on regular social contact with clients and customers. These include teachers, doctors, lawyers, public servants, and many others. The sudden thrust to teleworking for an unknown period of time has raised questions as to how these workers are coping with the new normal …

61: Power & Influence in Organizations — Dan Brass

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57: Reward Systems – Steven Kerr

Why do organizations espouse one thing but do another? This is essentially what Steven Kerr asks in his popular 1975 article in the Academy of Management Journal, “On the Folly of Rewarding A, While Hoping for B,” on reward systems. Using examples ranging from politics and war to business and public sector settings, Kerr found a common pattern: that the organization’s goals are too often not supported by the things they actually reward and encourage …

Reflections on the “Human Capital Hoax”

In this response to our Episode 36 on the “Human Capital Hoax,” listener Benoit Gautier critiques Fleming’s article that it is presenting a distorted view of the gig economy …

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38: Socialization and Occupational Communities – Van Maanen

In this episode, we examine John Van Maanen’s classic ethnographic study of police recruits from an urban police department in the U.S. “Police socialization: A longitudinal examination of job attitudes in an urban police department,” published in Administrative Science Quarterly in 1975, presents Van Maanen’s study on the socialization process of new police officers from their training and indoctrination at the police academy to their early months on the beat …

35: The Managed Heart – Arlie Hochschild

The Managed Heart, originally published in 1983 by Dr. Arlie Hochschild, introduced the concept of emotional labour as a counterpart to the physical and mental labour performed in the scope of one’s duties. The importance of emotional labour is made clear in Dr. Hochschild’s descrption of flight attendants, who regardless of the dispositions of airline passengers, turbulence in the flight, or personal stress is required to act and behave in ways that minimize passenger anxiety and encourage them to fly with that airline again. Thus, the book explores the challenges of stress, protecting one’s personal identity and private life, differentiated …

Related Resource Pages

Rack BA — Classic Organization and Management Theory

Curated list of resources regarding the major “classical” theories that initiated the field of organization studies, beginning with Taylorism and scientific management and continuing with the theories Fayol, Weber, and others …

Rack BB1 – Organizational Behavior (Micro-Individual)

Curated list of resources regarding the major theories of organization behavior such as emotions, sensemaking, socialization and organizational climate, and many others …

Rack BB2 — Organizational Behavior (Meso-Groups and Teams)

Curated list of resources regarding theories on groups, teams, and other small collections of individuals within an organizational context, from the worker level to top management teams …

Rack BB3 — Organizational Behavior (Macro-Org/System)

Curated list of resources on open systems theory and its many descendents such as general systems theory, cybernetics, and organizational ecology …

Rack BC — Contingency Theory

Curated list of resources regarding the major theories regarding the organizational context and how particular situations influence organizational structures, behaviors, and so on. Includes classic contingency theories and pragmatism …

Rack BD — Organizational Design

Curated list of resources on theories related to organizational structures and design, including control structures, power, and job design …

Rack BG — Organizational Development and Change

Curated list of resources regarding various theories regarding the external environment in organizations, such as labor relations, resource dependence theory, and others …

Rack BH – Human Dimension – Culture, Climate, Identity

Curated list of resources regarding sustainability and corporate social responsibility such as sustainable business practices, responses to climate change, sociomateriality, and ethical considerations …

Rack BI — Institution Theory

Curated list of resources on institution theory as exercised in organization studies …

Rack BL — Leadership Theories

Curated list of resources on theories related to leadership in organizations including classic trait theory, behavioral theories of leadership, and transactional / transformational leadership …

Rack BM – Modern Management Theories

Curated list of resources regarding the major schools of thought and the theoretical perspectives they established. Includes the Carnegie-Mellon School, Aston School, and others …

Rack BQ — Postmodern and Critical Theories

Curated list of resources on postmodernist views of organizations and organizing and contrasting them with the modernist view. Includes critical management studies and complexity theory …

Rack BS — Sociology & Anthropology

Curated list of resources on postmodernist views of organizations and organizing and contrasting them with the modernist view. Includes critical management studies and complexity theory …

References

Ashforth, B. E., & Humphrey, R. H. (1993). Emotional labor in service roles: The influence of identity. Academy of management review18(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 Journal49(5), 1016-1030.

Frost, P. J. (2004). Handling toxic emotions: New challenges for leaders and their organization. Organizational Dynamics33(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 Science26(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 Journal60(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)