7 Emotion in Organizations

Abstract

Emotion has become one of the most popular—and popularized—areas within organizational scholarship. This chapter attempts to review and bring together within a single framework the wide and often disjointed literature on emotion in organizations. The integrated framework includes processes detailed by previous theorists who have defined emotion as a sequence that unfolds chronologically. The emotion process begins with a focal individual who is exposed to an eliciting stimulus, registers the stimulus for its meaning, and experiences a feeling state and physiological changes, with downstream consequences for attitudes, behaviors, and cognitions, as well as facial expressions and other emotionally expressive cues. These downstream consequences can result in externally visible behaviors and cues that become, in turn, eliciting stimuli for interaction partners. For each stage of the emotion process, there are distinct emotion regulation processes that incorporate individual differences and group norms and that can become automatic with practice. Although research often examines these stages in relative isolation from each other, I argue that each matters largely due to its interconnectedness with the other stages. Incorporating intraindividual, individual, interpersonal, and organizational levels of analysis, this framework can be a starting point to situate, theorize, and test explicit mechanisms for the influence of emotion on organizational life.

We keep coming back to feelings, I'll have time for feelings after I'm dead. Right now we're busy. (NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, speaking about the historic Independence Day 2006 launch of the space shuttle Discovery, after discussing the horror and sadness at losing the Columbia space shuttle in 2003, the worry leading up to the launch of Discovery, and the relief and pleasure at watching Discovery succeed; Boyce, 2006)     

Unveiling the Canvas Ceiling: A Multidisciplinary Literature Review of Refugee Employment and Workforce Integration

Increasing levels of displacement and the need to integrate refugees in the workforce pose new challenges to organizations and societies. Extant research on refugee employment and workforce integration currently resides across various disconnected disciplines, posing a significant challenge for management scholars to contribute to timely and relevant solutions. In this paper, we endeavour to address this challenge by reviewing and synthesizing multidisciplinary literature on refugee employment and workforce integration. Using a relational framework, we organize our findings around three levels of analysis – institutional, organizational and individual – to outline the complexity of factors affecting refugees’ employment outcomes. Based on our analysis, we introduce and elaborate on the phenomenon of the canvas ceiling ? a systemic, multilevel barrier to refugee workforce integration and professional advancement. The primary contributions of this paper are twofold. First, we map and integrate the multidisciplinary findings on the challenges of refugee workforce integration. Second, we provide management scholarship with a future research agenda to address the knowledge gap identified in this review and advance practical developments in this domain.     

Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting as Substantive and Symbolic Behavior: A Multilevel Theoretical Analysis

This article describes a multilevel theoretical framework that examines the multiple causes of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting in the social environment of business. We argue that substantive and/or symbolic reporting flows from individual‐, aggregate‐, organizational‐, and institution‐level phenomena, and is thus a complex outcome of CSR and corporate social performance (CSP). Theoretical lenses range from reinforcement theory at the microlevel to legitimacy and stakeholder theories at the macrolevel, and include a discussion of the emergence of lower‐level CSR‐relevant characteristics to higher level constructs. Our goal is to clarify how this behavior develops from microlevel, mesolevel, and macrolevel processes with a view toward assisting corporations to better enact CSR reporting, and their stakeholders to effectively promote substantive reporting behavior.     

An Ecological Systems Perspective on Mentoring at Work: A Review and Future Prospects

After nearly 30 years as a subject of inquiry, mentoring remains a mainstay in the organizational literature, as relationships are arguably more important than ever to employees' personal and career growth. In this paper, we take an ecological perspective to situate and review topical areas of the literature with the intention of enhancing our understanding of how mentoring outcomes for protégés and mentors are determined not only by individual differences (e.g., personality) and dyadic factors (e.g., the quality of a relationship)—both of which represent the most frequently examined levels of analyses—but also the influences of the people from various social spheres comprising their developmental network, the larger organization of which they are a part, and macrosystem factors (e.g., technological shifts, globalization) that enable, constrain, or shape mentoring and other developmental relationships. Our review examines multi-level influences that shape mentoring outcomes, and brings into focus how the study of mentoring can be advanced by research at the network, organizational, and macrosystem levels. To help guide future research efforts, we assert that adult development and relational schema theories, Positive Organizational Scholarship, a social network perspective, signaling theory, and institutional theories can help to address emerging and unanswered questions at each ecological level.     

Applying multilevel confirmatory factor analysis techniques to the study of leadership

Statistical issues associated with multilevel data are becoming increasingly important to organizational researchers. This paper concentrates on the issue of assessing the factor structure of a construct at aggregate levels of analysis. Specifically, we describe a recently developed procedure for performing multilevel confirmatory factor analysis (MCFA) [Muthen, B.O. (1990). Mean and covariance structure analysis of hierarchical data. Paper presented at the Psychometric Society, Princeton, NJ; Muthen, B.O. (1994). Multilevel covariance structure analysis. Sociological Methods and Research, 22, 376–398], and provide an illustrative example of its application to leadership data reflecting both the organizational and societal level of analysis. Overall, the results of our illustrative analysis support the existence of a valid societal-level leadership construct, and show the potential of this multilevel confirmatory factor analysis procedure for leadership research and the field of I/O psychology in general.     

A Systems Perspective on Forgiveness in Organizations

Despite the widespread interest in forgiveness across a diversity of disciplines, the study of forgiveness has been strongly influenced by a psychological (i.e. individual-level) approach. Although this has provided many fruitful insights, it has also resulted in a fragmented literature that has underemphasized the multilevel and contextual nature of this phenomenon. Drawing upon a broad multidisciplinary approach, we provide a singular definition of forgiveness and integrate research on forgiveness into a multilevel systems approach. In doing so, we demonstrate that a deeper understanding can be realized by conceptualizing forgiveness as a part of a system of interconnecting psychological, social, structural, and cultural relations. By embedding forgiveness into context, our systems perspective provides novel insights into the factors that facilitate and constrain forgiveness at multiple levels of analysis, how the interplay between contextual levels can shape forgiveness at lower levels (e.g. individual level), and how examining forgiveness in organizational contexts can highlight the importance of examining other outcomes (e.g. reconciliation, peaceful co-existence, and détente) as well as facilitate the development of actionable theory.     

Beware the angry leader: Trait anger and trait anxiety as predictors of petty tyranny

Drawing on the general aggression model and theories of victimization and temperamental goodness-of-fit, we investigated trait anger and trait anxiety as antecedents of petty tyranny: employing a multilevel design with data from 84 sea captains and 177 crew members. Leader trait anger predicted subordinate-reported petty tyranny. Subordinate trait anxiety was associated with subordinate-reported petty tyranny. The association between leader trait anger and subordinate-reported petty tyranny was strongest among low trait anger subordinates supporting the theory of temperamental goodness-of-fit—or rather misfit—in dyads. Hence, leader anger-generated petty tyranny seems to constitute itself both as an average leadership style and as behavior targeting specific subordinates, in this case low trait anger subordinates. In addition, anxious subordinates report more exposure to such abusive leadership behaviors irrespective of levels of trait anger in the captain. The practical implications are above all the needs for organizational and individual management of leader trait anger.     

Getting tuned in to those who are different: The role of empathy as mediator between diversity and performance

We present a theoretical model on the processes that mediate and moderate the diversity-performance relationship. Past research on this topic—for example the categorization elaboration model (van Knippenberg et al. 2004)—has often focused on information elaboration as mediator. Complementing this cognitive perspective, we propose that group diversity can also stimulate group members to engage with each other emotionally, resulting in higher levels of empathy—an emotional state which arises from the comprehension and apprehension of fellow group members’ emotional state. Empathy, in turn, is likely to enhance performance through processes within a single group member and through processes between group members. At the core of the model lies the proposition that group- as well as individual-level empathy mediate the relationship between diversity of organizational units and the performance of individual members and groups at large (multilevel mediation). Furthermore, we specify moderating conditions for the relationship between diversity and empathy. Diversity beliefs and diversity climates are introduced as second-order moderators.     

Organizational Improvisation: A Consolidating Review and Framework

Organizational improvisation is increasingly recognized as a relevant area of management research. However, the cumulativeness of research on improvisation in organizations remains low. This paper organizes existing contributions on organizational improvisation within a new consolidating framework combining degrees (minor, bounded and structural) and levels (individual, interpersonal and organizational) of improvisation. The proposed degree/level framework allows for reviewing the existing literature on organizational improvisation in the management disciplines of strategy, organizational behaviour, organizational theory, innovation and marketing in a systematic manner. It also exposes potential areas for future research across management disciplines, research areas, organizational settings and industries, and beyond existing metaphors, most notably of jazz and improvisational theatre.     

Managing the external financing constraints of social enterprises: A systematic review of a diversified research landscape

Social enterprises, located between non-profit organisations and for-profit firms, often struggle to acquire external funding. An increasing amount of research on the external financing of social enterprises stems from a fragmented body of the literature anchored in a variety of subject areas (e.g. entrepreneurship, public sector management, general management and strategy). We systematically review 204 academic articles published between 1998 and 2021 to bridge the knowledge gaps in these subject areas by: (1) mapping the field of the external financing of social enterprises at the individual, organisational and institutional levels; (2) synthesising the findings to develop an overarching framework; and (3) discussing theoretically sound future research avenues. We find that research at the individual level focuses primarily on investors’ perspective of the ideal characteristics of a social entrepreneur. Research at the organisational level often addresses the dual logics of social enterprises and their impact on the successful financing of these businesses and the role of investor–investee collaboration. Research at the institutional level can be clustered into cultural, economic, political and legal factors. Overall, we stress the need for research that adopts an overarching view by considering all three levels of analysis simultaneously and using organisational and economic theories.     

Military leadership: A context specific review

The purpose of this article is to review the literature on military leadership and highlight research opportunities for leadership scholars. The review uses a context specific approach and turns to a simplified version of Hunt's (Hunt, J. G. (1991). Leadership: A new synthesis. Newbury Park, CA: Sage) extended multilevel leadership model as a template to examine the many facets of military leadership. The military leadership literature is stratified into the systems, organizational, and direct levels of leadership with an examination of studies on the critical tasks and individual capabilities required at each level. Additionally, studies on organizational culture and effectiveness at each level are addressed. The article emphasizes that the military is undergoing substantial change as it adjusts to the changing nature of war and a fluid world situation. Based on trends in the military, the review concludes with several general recommendations for future research.     

Inter-organizational network structures in Russia: organizational changes from institutional and social embeddedness perspectives

Theory posits that organizations are embedded socially within their environment. The level of embeddedness depends highly on the environmental uncertainty a company and its network partners face. The latest research on transition economies indicates that the institutional framework in these countries is highly relevant for inter-organizational structures (i.e. formalization, standardization, frequency, intensity and reciprocity). As Russia constitutes a good example of high environmental uncertainty, a closer look at organizational changes in general and inter-organizational network structures in particular is taken. This paper extends the theoretical and empirical scope of social and economic theories on inter-organizational structures by formulating a conceptual framework that unites economic rationalism with socially embedded arguments. Contributing to emerging international HRD literature, the objective is to understand better the institutional influences on network structures and thus on organizational change. Moreover, it will be demonstrated how far organizational changes and human resource development is associated with institutional influences on network structures.     

MNEs' Agency Within Institutional Contexts: A Study of Walmart's Post-acquisition Practices in Mexico,Germany, and Japan

The issue of MNEs' adaptation to host country institutional environments in their post-cross-border acquisition implementation, and the outcomes thereof, remains underexplored in international management studies. The purpose of this paper is to assess the applicability of three institutional approaches — (1) the earlier variant of the neoinstitutional theory (ENIT), (2) its recent variant (RNIT), and the comparative institutional analysis approach (CIA) — to explain (non)adaptation behavior in host country environments. Using Walmart's acquisition cases, we show that the MNE adopted a non-adaptation behavior in Mexico and Germany—countries which represent vastly different institutional environments—and succeeded in the former, but failed and withdrew from the market in the latter. However, in the Japanese institutional environment, which is similar to the German one, Walmart engaged in selective adaptation and survived in the market. Based on the case data, we offer a critical assessment of the applicability of the three approaches. These three approaches provide a base on which to develop a model to explain the relationship between institutional influences, an MNE's organizational agency and adaptation behavior, as well as outcomes. Moreover, we discuss future research directions and provide implications for practitioners related to MNEs' adaptation behavior and the ensuing outcomes in host markets.     

不同主体层次中组织的知识转化二维结构:前因变量与企业绩效的影响

企业价值的增长越来越依赖于所拥有的组织知识,但是不同主体层次中组织知识的转化及其所带来的绩效决定了组织中员工绩效、团队绩效和组织绩效的水平。本文首先根据对国内外研究文献的归纳和整理,分析了组织知识转化的各主体层次性及其相应层次的前因变量,构建了不同主体层次中组织的知识转化及其前因变量与企业绩效的影响理论模型和研究假设,通过文献回顾、访谈、半开放式问卷、预调查等方法设计出相关问卷,并利用问卷调查所获得的数据,通过探索性因子分析和验证性因子分析方法分析各主体层次知识转化的二维结构,采用结构方程模型对个人、团队和组织特征变量对个人、团队和组织层次的知识转化及其员工绩效、团队绩效和组织绩效的影响进行了探讨。最后,本文基于企业现实情况对其研究结果进行了详细的分析与讨论,并提出了研究局限性以及未来研究方向。     

Authentic leadership and positive organizational behavior: A meso, multi-level perspective

Authentic leadership (AL) and positive organizational behavior (POB) are two important emerging approaches in the organizational sciences. To date, published work on AL and POB has been primarily leader-focused and based on individual differences. In this article, after verifying this individual-level focus via content coding of AL articles, AL and POB are explicated and integrated using a meso, multi-level perspective. Essentially, viewed in terms of multiple levels of analysis, AL promotes various multi-level “primary” criteria and outcomes of POB that, in turn, enhances various multi-level “secondary” criteria and outcomes of performance. Direct effects of AL on performance at multiple levels of analysis also are plausible. Implications for future meso perspectives on leadership theory and research in general and on AL and POB in particular are discussed.     

Understanding the Antecedents of Effective Knowledge Management: The Importance of a Knowledge‐Centered Culture*

Within the context of knowledge management, little research has been conducted that identifies the antecedents of a knowledge‐centered culture—those organizational qualities that encourage knowledge creation and dissemination. In this study, the existing literature on organizational climate, job characteristics, and organizational learning (in the form of cooperative learning theory) are linked with the current thinking and research findings related to knowledge management to develop a theoretical model explaining the relationships among organizational climate, the level of cooperative learning that takes place between knowledge workers, and the resulting level of knowledge created and disseminated as measured by team performance and individual satisfaction levels. The study goes on to empirically test the proposed research model by investigating the climate of organizations, and seeks to understand the linkage between a set of organizational and individual characteristics and knowledge‐related activities found in cooperative learning groups and the resulting work outcomes. The hypothesized research model is tested using LISREL with data collected from 203 information systems (IS) professionals engaged in systems development activities. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications the results have for future research and managerial practice.     

The Social Lives of Products: Analyzing Product Demography for Management Theory and Practice

Abstract

Despite the centrality of products in many strategic and managerial theoretical frameworks, little is known systematically about how and why specific products come and go from markets. We argue that narrowing this gap will likely enhance management theory, and we propose that research on product demography—the social lives of products—is a promising way to proceed. For organizing various theoretical ideas used in prior studies, we offer a classification framework. It defines four broad theoretical perspectives on product demography: market rationality, firm rationality, organizational bounded rationality, and institutional rationality. We also outline an approach to product demography that studies empirically the rates of product launch, growth, and withdrawal using stochastic models and data on all products ever appearing in bounded industrial domains. Finally, we discuss the challenges presented by such a fragmented approach to research on product demography and propose a generic research program intended to avoid stagnation.     

How high-commitment HRM relates to PC violation and outcomes: The mediating role of supervisor support and PC fulfilment at individual and organizational levels

Psychological contract (PC) constitutes a theoretical framework for; explaining labor relationships, and it has been considered as a; mediation step between structural variables and processes and work and; organizational outcomes. Whereas PC (un)fulfillment; showed consistent relationships with variables such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, performance, or absenteeism, the effects of PC; violation (emotional answers that develop after perceptions of PC; breach) have been less investigated. In addition, structural antecedents; of PC constructs had included Human Resources (HR) practices. This paper aims to extend; research on PC and its role as a mediator between HR practices and work; outcomes, both at individual and organizational levels. Specifically, we; examined the impact of human resource practices on employee performance; and sickness absences through a sequence of supervisor support, PC; fulfillment and PC violation. In a sample of 4648 employees from 214; companies of seven different countries, our results indicate that high-commitment; human resource practices were significantly and negatively; related to PC violation through supervisor support and positively to PC; fulfillment; in turn, PC violation was negatively related to employee; performance and positively to sick leave. These relationships at the; individual level were partially replicated at the organizational level, developing partial homologous models and showing that shared perceptions; about HR practices lead to shared perceptions on PC affecting collective; outcomes. Therefore, the findings shed new light on PC theory, regarding; the mediating role of PC constructs and negative emotions in the; relationships between HR practices and support from supervisors and performance at individual and organizational levels.     

Institutional transitions,global mindset,and EMNE internationalization

Recently revised theoretical explanations of the internationalization process have been offered to specifically account for the propensity of Emerging Market Multinationals (EMNEs) to engage in accelerated internationalization. However, this literature stream has yet to consider how the fundamental institutional transitions occurring in emerging markets promote the individual and organizational level global mindset that helps account for this accelerated, proactive international expansion. Our dynamic multi-level conceptual framework examines the influences of both the home country institutions and intra-organizational mindsets on the development of EMNE outward FDI decision making. This framework contributes to extant literature by integrating conceptualizations of national culture with the informal and formal institutions offered by institutional theory, while examining how fundamental shifts in these influence the intra-organizational context. Furthermore, our conceptual framework adopts a multi-level perspective of global mindset as an antecedent of firm decision making and adds to the global mindset literature by arguing that institutional transition is a macro level antecedent of global mindset.     

History in Organization and Management Theory: More Than Meets the Eye

Abstract

There has been a growing debate about the role of history in management research with several authors making suggestions on how to bring the two (back) together and others even highlighting the need for a “historic turn”. What we argue in this paper is that, while history was indeed sidelined by the scientization of management since the late 1950s, it started to make a comeback from the 1980s onwards and is increasingly employed in a number of research programs. We stress that the crucial question for management scholars engaging with history (or wanting to do so) is how it relates to theory. First of all, we present a systematic overview of the way history has been used—both at the micro (organizational) and macro-levels of analysis—distinguishing between what we refer to as “history to theory” and “history in theory”. In the former, we consider those research programs, such as (neo-)institutionalism, where history serves as evidence to develop, modify or test theories. In the case of “history in theory” we identify research programs where history or the past are part of the theoretical model itself as a driver or moderator, with “imprinting” as a prime example. Second, we also identify a growing number of studies that go further by displaying what we call “historical cognizance” in the sense of incorporating period effects or historical contingencies into their theorizing efforts. Finally, drawing on our broad overview, we make more specific suggestions for increasing the visibility and influence of history in organization and management theory.