FUNCTIONALITY, INTENTIONALITY AND MORALITY
RESEARCH ON EMOTION IN ORGANIZATIONS Series Editors: Charmine E. J. Ha¨rtel, Neal M. Ashkanasy and Wilfred J. Zerbe Recent Volumes: Volume 1: The Effect of Affect in Organizational Settings. Edited by – Charmine E. J. Ha¨rtel, Neal M. Ashkanasy and Wilfred J. Zerbe Volume 2:
Individual and Organizational Perspectives on Emotion Management and Display. Edited by – Charmine E. J. Ha¨rtel, Neal M. Ashkanasy and Wilfred J. Zerbe
RESEARCH ON EMOTION IN ORGANIZATIONS VOLUME 3
FUNCTIONALITY, INTENTIONALITY AND MORALITY EDITED BY
CHARMINE E. J. HA¨RTEL Monash University, Victoria, Australia
NEAL M. ASHKANASY University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
WILFRED J. ZERBE University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Amsterdam – Boston – Heidelberg – London – New York – Oxford Paris – San Diego – San Francisco – Singapore – Sydney – Tokyo JAI Press is an imprint of Elsevier
JAI Press is an imprint of Elsevier Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP, UK Radarweg 29, PO Box 211, 1000 AE Amsterdam, The Netherlands 525 B Street, Suite 1900, San Diego, CA 92101-4495, USA First edition 2007 Copyright r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher Permissions may be sought directly from Elsevier’s Science & Technology Rights Department in Oxford, UK: phone (+44) (0) 1865 843830; fax (+44) (0) 1865 853333; email:
[email protected]. Alternatively you can submit your request online by visiting the Elsevier web site at http://elsevier.com/locate/permissions, and selecting Obtaining permission to use Elsevier material Notice No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein. Because of rapid advances in the medical sciences, in particular, independent verification of diagnoses and drug dosages should be made British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-7623-1414-0 ISSN: 1746-9791 (Series) For information on all JAI Press publications visit our website at books.elsevier.com Printed and bound in the United Kingdom 07 08 09 10 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS ABOUT THE EDITORS
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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
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OVERVIEW: FUNCTIONALITY, INTENTIONALITY AND MORALITY CHAPTER 1 THE END OF EXPRESSIONISM: A CONDITIONAL APPROACH TO BOUNDED EMOTIONALITY IN ORGANIZATIONS Claire E. Ashton-James
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CHAPTER 2 THE USE, OVERUSE, AND MISUSE OF AFFECT, MOOD, AND EMOTION IN ORGANIZATIONAL RESEARCH Ve´ronique Tran
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CHAPTER 3 INVESTIGATING THE EMOTIONAL BASIS OF CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP: THE ROLE OF LEADERS’ POSITIVE MOOD AND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE Frank Walter and Heike Bruch
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CHAPTER 4 TEAM EMOTION RECOGNITION ACCURACY AND TEAM PERFORMANCE Hillary Anger Elfenbein, Jeffrey T. Polzer and Nalini Ambady
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CHAPTER 5 LEVERAGING EMOTIONS IN VALUE MANAGEMENT OF BRANDS AND PRODUCTS Leslie J. Harrington CHAPTER 6 THE INTENTIONAL USE OF SERVICE RECOVERY STRATEGIES TO INFLUENCE CONSUMER EMOTION, COGNITION AND BEHAVIOR Dominique A. Keeffe, Rebekah Russell-Bennett and Alastair Tombs
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CHAPTER 7 LEADING WITH A SMILE: THE INFLUENCE OF MANAGERS’ LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOR ON THE EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE OF EMPLOYEES AND CUSTOMERS Ronit Kark and Hana Medler-Liraz
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CHAPTER 8 EMOTION MANAGEMENT IN CROSSCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE: ‘‘SMILE TRAINING’’ IN JAPANESE AND NORTH AMERICAN SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS Aviad E. Raz and Anat Rafaeli
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CHAPTER 9 INCORPORATION OF EMOTIONAL LABOR IN THE DEMAND–CONTROL–SUPPORT MODEL: THE RELATION WITH EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION AND PERSONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT IN NURSES Ge´rard Na¨ring and Annemarie van Droffelaar
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CHAPTER 10 BUILDING A CLIMATE OF TRUST DURING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF JUSTICE PERCEPTIONS AND EMOTION Nell Kimberley and Charmine E. J. Ha¨rtel
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CHAPTER 11 EMOTIONAL CAPITAL IN CARING WORK Tuija Virkki
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CHAPTER 12 HOW ‘BAD APPLES’ SPOIL THE BUNCH: FAULTLINES, EMOTIONAL LEVERS, AND EXCLUSION IN THE WORKPLACE Charmine E. J. Ha¨rtel and Debra Panipucci
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
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ABOUT THE EDITORS Charmine E. J. Ha¨rtel is Professor of Organizational Behavior and Director of Research for the Department of Management at Monash University. Her current research activities focus on emotions and patterns of relating at work, development of emotional intelligence, diversity, leadership, and team effectiveness. Charmine has been recognized for her excellence in research, innovation in organizational practice, supervision, service and mentoring, in particular with relation to students from diverse backgrounds, and is the recipient of several awards including the Martin E.P. Seligman Applied Research Award, the Janet Chusmir Service Award, the Monash University Vice Chancellors Award for Postgraduate Supervision Excellence and the Deakin University Student Association Award for Supervisor of the Year in the Faculty of Business and Law. She has authored five books and over 50 refereed journal articles, which have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Management, Academy of Management Review, Applied Psychology: An International Review, Leadership Quarterly, and Journal of Applied Psychology and is on the editorial board of Human Relations. Neal M. Ashkanasy is Professor of Management in the UQ Business School at the University of Queensland, and Research Director for the Faculty of Business, Economics, and Law. He has a PhD (1989) in Social and Organizational Psychology from UQ and is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. His research in recent years has focused on emotions in organizational life. He has published in leading journals, including the Academy of Management Review and the Journal of Management; and is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Organizational Behavior and Associate Editor of Academy of Management Learning and Education. Wilfred J. Zerbe is Professor of Human Resources and Organizational Dynamics in the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary, and Visiting Professor in Theseus International Management Institute, Nice, France. His research interests focus on business ethics, complexity, emotions in organizations, organizational research methods, service ix
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management, and leadership. His publications have appeared in books and journals including The Academy of Management Review, Industrial and Labour Relations Review, Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Psychology, Journal of Services Marketing, and Journal of Research in Higher Education. He is also an active consultant and executive educator.
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Nalini Ambady
Department of Psychology, Tufts University, USA
Claire E. Ashton-James
Duke University, USA and University of New South Wales, Australia
Heike Bruch
Institute for Leadership and HR Management, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
Hilary Anger Elfenbein
Haas School of Business, University of California, USA
Leslie J. Harrington
LH Color, USA
Charmine E. J. Ha¨rtel
Department of Management, Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University, Australia
Ronit Kark
Department of Psychology and Sociology, Bar-Ilan University, Israel
Dominique A. Keeffe
School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Nell Kimberley
Department of Management, Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University, Australia
Hana Medler-Liraz
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bar-Ilan University, Israel
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Ge´rard Na¨ring
Department of Work and Health, Faculty of Psychology, Open University and Section of Clinical Psychology, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Debra Panipucci
Deakin University, Australia
Jeffrey T. Polzer
Harvard Business School, Harvard University, USA
Anat Rafaeli
Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology, Israel
Aviad E. Raz
Department of Behavioral Sciences, Ben-Gurion University, Israel
Rebekah Russell-Bennett
School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Alastair Tombs
UQ Business School, University of Queensland, Australia
Ve´ronique Tran
ESCP-EAP, France
Annemarie van Droffelaar
Shared Ambition, The Netherlands
Tuija Virkki
Department of Social Science and Philosophy, University of Jyva¨skyla¨, Finland
Frank Walter
Institute for Leadership and HR Management, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
OVERVIEW: FUNCTIONALITY, INTENTIONALITY AND MORALITY The field of research on emotions in organizations is one that has garnered a great deal of enthusiastic attention and positive regard from both scholars and practitioners. As a sign of the maturation of the field, we are seeing more and more critical and self-reflective approaches and examinations to the topic area. In this volume of the Research on Emotions in Organizations series, we provide examples of some of these works with respect to the function of emotions in the workplace and the many ways in which emotions can be intentionally used and abused to influence behavior. Collectively, the works expand our understanding of the boundary conditions of emotional influences in organizations, the ways in which emotions are intentionally used to influence organizational outcomes, the conditions that determine whether emotions influence to public detriment or good, and the connection between emotions and morality.
THE 2006 ‘EMONET’ CONFERENCE As in the previous volumes of Research on Emotions in Organizations, the chapters in this book are drawn largely from the best contributions to the biannual International Conference on Emotions and Organizational Life. The editors of this series are the co-founders and co-organizers of this event which has come to be known as the ‘‘Emonet’’ conference. Eight of the chapters in this volume were selected from those papers accepted, using a double-blind peer-review process, for inclusion in the fifth Emonet conference held in Atlanta in August 2006. The conference attracted 51 submissions from which a total of 39 paper, symposium, and poster presentations were selected for inclusion on the program. Conference program submission included as chapters in this volume were selected based on their quality and interest, as well as the contribution that they make to the theme of this volume: functionality, intentionality and morality of emotions. The volume is completed by four additional invited chapters. xiii
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As in previous years, we would like to acknowledge the assistance of the conference paper reviewers (see appendix) who give their time and effort to provide quality reviews which enable us to host a conference of the utmost quality. The sixth conference in the series is scheduled to be held in Geneva, Switzerland in 2008. Readers interested in learning more about the conference or the Emonet list should visit the Emonet website http://www.uq. edu.au/emonet/.
THE THEME OF THIS VOLUME The theme of this volume, Functionality, Intentionality and Morality, reflects an area of considerable importance in emotions research at this point in time. Organizations are social entities that share many common characteristics with one another, but also some important differences. Further, organizations differ in important ways from other social entities such as clubs and family units. The function emotion plays in different types of social entities is likely to vary as the purpose and relationships within such entities do. Similarly, intentions and moral judgments relating to emotions are likely to depend on the context with which they are connected. For this reason, it is essential to ask what function emotions play in organizations, as well as what function they do not play. Similarly, it is important to the understanding of organizational behavior and management to identify how emotions are being intentionally used to influence organizational outcomes as well as the morality of doing so. Such knowledge will assist scholars in focusing their research questions appropriately and provide guidance to managers and practitioners on the ‘who, what, when, where and how’ of emotions management.
THE CHAPTERS Chapters 1–4: On the Functionality of Emotion in Organizations In Chapter 1, Claire Ashton-James opens the discussion with a thoughtprovoking consideration of the functionality of emotion. She reminds us of a question fundamental to the field – Which areas of organizational behavior do emotions play a critical role in the determination of individual and organizational outcomes and under what conditions? Through a critical review of the literature on affect in organizations, she uncovers the original
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premises upon which such research was justified and takes us back to classic findings on the impact of emotions in organizations. Moving to the current state of research in the field, she seeks to stimulate scholars of emotion in organizations to critically reflect upon the reasoning behind their examination of affect within their own research agendas, and offers the provocative suggestion that in becoming enamored with the field there has been an absence of thoughtful reflection upon the theoretical and practical relevance of emotions to the phenomena under investigation. She links this stage in the field’s development to the renaissance and suggests that it is time for the field to push forward into modernism adopting a minimalist approach. Drawing upon existing research on the processes by which affect influences cognition and behavior, and the conditions that moderate the outcomes of these processes, she identifies the conditions under which the role of emotions in the workplace is consequential versus inconsequential and suggests that affect will make its mark on organizational life when task performance requires or motivates the use of heuristic or substantive information processing strategies which enable affect infusion. She suggests that outside of these boundary conditions, while affective states may be present they may in fact be inconsequential to organizational outcomes. In the next chapter, Veronique Tran examines challenges faced by emotions researchers related to the definition and measurement of mood, emotion and affect. In response to these challenges Tran proposes a categorization of emotions and their corresponding appraisals, functions, and behavioral implications. The emotions categorized are achievement emotions, approach emotions, resignation emotions, and antagonistic emotions. While there is a need for further research to confirm this categorization, this is a potentially important development that will aid in the reduction of confusion about the definitions used in research on emotion, affect, and mood; as well as in the results and implications of these studies. Authors Frank Walter and Heike Bruch report in Chapter 3 on an empirical field investigation of the emotional antecedents of charismatic leadership. In this respect, their study addresses an area that has been speculated about for some years now (e.g., see Ashkanasy & Tse, 2000; George, 2000), but where supportive empirical data have hitherto been non-existent. In their study of 34 work groups in the USA and Germany, Walter and Bruch found that follower perceptions of their leader’s charismatic leadership are associated with high scores on leader-positive mood or emotional intelligence. While this is clearly an early study, it is the first to provide clear empirical support for the idea that emotion plays an important function in charismatic leadership.
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In Chapter 4, Hilary Anger Elfenbein, Jeffrey T. Polzer, and Nalini Ambady present the results of an innovative field study that examined the notion of Team Emotional Recognition Accuracy (TERA). They proposed and found in their study that the holistic ability of a team to recognize emotional expressions of other team members is a predictor of team performance. To study this phenomenon, they assessed team members’ ability to read emotional expressions portrayed in video clips, and then measured numerous aspects of their team’s performance in a year-long community action project. In fact, TERA ratings accounted for a remarkable 28.1% of the variance in team performance at the end of the year. Results, in particular, supported the idea that a team’s ability to recognize positive emotional expression predicted positive team outcomes. But a surprising finding was that the ability to recognize negative emotional expression predicted negative team outcomes. The authors explain this finding in terms of contagion theory (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994), suggesting that team members’ sensitivity to negative emotion reflects low morale and consequently predicted performance.
Chapters 5–8: On the Intentional Use of Emotions in Organizations Chapter 5, by Leslie J. Harrington, focuses on the intentional use of emotions to facilitate consumer preferences. From this perspective, consumers’ perception of product value, based on the C-A-B model proposed by Holbrook and Batra (1987), and their subsequent product choices (B for behavior) is a function of what they know about the product (C for cognition) and what they feel towards the product (A for affect). Harrington illustrates her argument with examples (e.g., the successful Coca-Cola ‘‘Happiness in a bottle’’ campaign) and reference to the customer loyalty literature. Intriguingly, she also proposes that color may be a critical factor in evoking emotional responses to products. While there is a need for empirical research to confirm this proposition, it clearly has potential implications in the consumer behavior literature. In Chapter 6, Dominique A. Keeffe, Rebekah Russell-Bennett, and Alastair Tombs present the results of a study examining the effectiveness of service recovery strategies ranging from suboptimal to optimal on consumers’ emotional, cognitive, and negative behavioral responses to a failed service encounter. This study provides a different example of how organizations can intentionally use the emotions of customers to elicit certain responses. The results of the study indicate that the use of different service recovery strategies
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does have an influence on emotion, cognition, and negative behaviors. For example, the use of an optimal strategy is more likely to leave customers feeling happy, fulfilled, optimistic, pleased, relieved, thrilled, more satisfied, and with a greater sense of justice regarding the service encounter as well as reduce the occurrence of complaints, retaliation, or exit. Ronit Kark and Hana Medler-Liraz develop in Chapter 7 a conceptual model of the process by which the intentional behavior of leaders affects the emotional experience of service employees; and how this in turn influences the well-being of employees, their behavior, and the subsequent emotional experience of customers. These authors argue that, when leaders adopt behaviors consistent with transformational leadership and high emotional intelligence, employees are more likely to see their work environment as characteristic of bounded emotionality (Mumby & Putnam, 1992), and less likely to experience the negative effects of emotional labor. Both of these effects serve to reduce the potential for emotional exhaustion so that employees are more likely to display positive emotion. Kark and Liraz also posit a direct negative relationship between leadership and emotional exhaustion and, through the mechanism of emotional contagion, a direct positive effect on employee-positive display of emotion. Finally, they argue that the consequence of employee-positive display is customer-positive display of emotion. The model proposed by Kark and Liraz represents a welcome organization and integration of findings and theories from divergent perspectives on emotion and leadership. Their hypotheses will serve to motivate empirical testing and, importantly, further refinement of the model. Kark and Liraz point out that in fact the relationships between leader, follower, and customer behavior may be reciprocal, such that follower characteristics affect leader behavior, for example, and the negative behavior of customers creates employee stress. In the following chapter, Aviad E. Raz and Anat Rafaeli compare the intentional management of emotion across cultures. They point out that, on the surface, different cultures may emphasize similar behavior, such as the ubiquitous smile in service interactions, but that such seemingly similar behaviors must be understood within surrounding cultural contexts to uncover strikingly different underlying dynamics. They compare the case of smiling behavior in an American convenience store chain with that of a Japanese specialty store. In both these countries, store chains initiated campaigns to influence employee service behavior, notably to increase smiling. Raz and Rafaeli show, however, how tolerance for violations of display expectations, reactions to incentives to behave appropriately, and the focus
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of off-the-job training, differed significantly between these countries. Further, these differences can be understood in terms of contrasting cultural values. For example, while emotion management in both North American and Japanese culture encompasses the control of emotion, in North America it is based on a motivation to avoid individual guilt by obeying personal standards, whereas in Japan it is based on motivation to avoid the social shaming that follows from not meeting a public standard. This study addresses the need for research addressing the impact of culture on the use of emotions (Ha¨rtel & Ha¨rtel, 2005).
Chapters 9–12: On the Morality of Using Emotions in Organizations In Chapter 9, Ge´rard Na¨ring and Annemarie van Droffelaar examine the relationship between emotional labor and three dimensions of burnout, namely emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. Their research highlights the moral obligations of organizations in terms of job design, employee selection, and development. Findings show that emotional exhaustion signals job design flaws. In particular, when workers have high job demand but low job control, they are likely to experience emotional exhaustion. Having a job with high emotional labor was also shown to contribute to emotional exhaustion. The authors show further that the strategies employees use to perform emotional labor influences the likelihood of becoming emotionally exhausted. In particular, when individuals use surface acting (i.e., pretending to feel organizationally desired emotions), they are more likely to experience emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and diminished feelings of personal accomplishment than when they use deep acting (i.e., trying actually to feel organizationally desired emotions). The less effort it takes for an individual to display the required emotions (i.e., emotional consonance), the better their outcomes related to emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. Thus, employees selected for such positions should have the capacity to develop the skills to perform deep acting for the specific role as well as receive training to reinforce these skills and increase emotional consonance. Next, Nell Kimberley and Charmine E. J. Ha¨rtel provide an example of the morality–emotions connection by explicating the link between the character and practices of leaders, perceived justice, emotions, and trust during times of uncertainty. In their model, employee trust in senior management during organizational change is mediated by perceptions of justice, which in turn are shaped by employees’ perceptions of senior executives’ character
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(integrity, benevolence, integrity) and organizational practices (communication adequacy, voice/participation, respectful treatment of employees, behavior modeling). Kimberley and Ha¨rtel argue further, however, that the justice–trust relationship is mediated, in part, by employees’ emotional reactions to their perceptions of justice (or injustice). In particular, employees who come to a belief that their senior executives are administering the organization justly are likely to hold positive attitudes that in turn facilitate positive behaviors, including both in-role and extra-role performance, and inhibit counterproductive behaviors. As a consequence, such employees are more likely to cooperate in organizational change programs, which the authors characterize as a positive climate for change. Tuija Virkki, the author of Chapter 11, situates emotion work within a context in which such work has an inherent moral tone, so as to contrast the concept of emotional labor with that of emotional capital. Emotional capital here refers to the use of emotion to promote organizational outcomes within a context of professional and personal norms that ascribe value to emotion work. In the particular setting studied by Virkki, emotional capital follows when emotion work is used to promote client well-being within a context that values caring. In contrast to emotional labor, which emphasizes the cost of emotion management, emotional capital views emotion work as a personal competence that contributes to an employee’s social and organizational position. Further, within a context where a strong ‘ethic of care’ is present, this emotional capital also translates into moral value. In a study of Finnish nurses and social workers, Virkki shows how employees use emotional skills to deal with client challenges by interpreting client emotions and responding appropriately. In the closing chapter, Charmine E. J. Ha¨rtel and Debra Panipucci provide insight into how to know when an influence attempt involving emotions is immoral. Using the metaphor of a ‘bad apple,’ the authors describe the way that the actions and interactions of those employees that are ‘bad apples’ can create destructive and unethical behaviors that negatively impact the emotional well-being and performance of the team. The authors identify nine emotional levers which can be used to manipulate the creation or salience of dividing lines within a team. They suggest, however, that whether or not the ‘bad apple’ is successful in ‘spoiling the bunch’ depends on the cognitive moral development, locus of control, clarity of self-concept, and emotional capacity of the individuals who they are trying to manipulate. This chapter raises some very interesting issues about the way emotion is used in teams and it is suggested that organizations must hold people accountable for the constructive use of emotion management in the workplace.
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CONCLUSION The chapters in this volume provide an extremely provocative commentary on when emotions are functional, dysfunctional, or irrelevant to organizational behavior. They also address the ways in which emotions are employed intentionally to achieve outcomes, and how we may begin considering what constitutes moral obligations and violations regarding emotions.
REFERENCES Ashkanasy, N. M., & Tse, B. (2000). Transformational leadership as management of emotion: A conceptual review. In: N. M. Ashkanasy, C. E. J. Ha¨rtel & W. J. Zerbe (Eds), Emotions in the workplace. Research, theory, and practice (pp. 221–235). Westport, CT: Quorum. George, J. M. (2000). Emotions and leadership. The role of emotional intelligence. Human Relations, 53, 1027–1055. Ha¨rtel, C. E. J., & Ha¨rtel, G. F. (2005). Cross-cultural differences in emotions: The why and how. Commentary on Scherer et al.’s survey-study ‘‘Emotions in everyday life’’. Social Science Information, 44(4), 681–691. Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Rapson, R. L. (1994). Emotional contagion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holbrook, M. B., & Batra, R. (1987). Assessing the role of emotions as mediators of consumer responses to advertising. Journal of Consumer Research, 14, 404–420. Mumby, D. K., & Putnam, L. L. (1992). The politics of emotion: A feminist reading of bounded rationality. Academy of Management Review, 17, 465–486.
APPENDIX. CONFERENCE REVIEWERS Yvonne Athanasaw Remi Ayoko Liuba Belkin Rebekah Bennett Geetu Bharwaney John Blenkinsopp Ce´leste M. Brotheridge Claire Ashton-James Judith Chapman Dan S. Chiaburu Shane Connelly Panikkos Constanti
Christina Fong Kevin Fox Yuka Fujimoto Donald G. Gardner Markus Groth Sally Victoria Russell Anne Herman Elaine Hollensbe Alice Hsu Ishroop Singh Aneja Hazel-Anne Johnson Bob Jones
Jane Murray Peter Noordink Suzyn Ornstein Liam Page Tuck Pescosolido Alberto Ramirez Roni Reiter-Palmon Erin M. Richard Lisa Scherer Dave Schmidt Aiwa Shirako Marta Sinclair
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James Diefendorff Lorna Doucet Vanessa Druskat Marissa Edwards Dorthe Eide Hillary Anger Elfenbein Aimee Ellis Ethel Brundin Gerard Finnemore
Kostas Kafetsios Janet B. Kellett Nell Kimberley Gail Kinman Yongmei Liu Lu Wang Patti Madrill Annabelle Mark Gordon Mueller-Seitz
Roy Smollan Micheal Stratton Joo-Seng Tan Sue Vickers-Thompson Bernd Vogel Terry Waters-Marsh Kate Watland
Charmine E. J. Ha¨rtel, Neal M. Ashkanasy and Wilfred J. Zerbe
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CHAPTER 1 THE END OF EXPRESSIONISM: A CONDITIONAL APPROACH TO BOUNDED EMOTIONALITY IN ORGANIZATIONS$ Claire E. Ashton-James ABSTRACT Historically, research in organizational behavior has denied and even denounced the presence and impact of emotions in the workplace. Today, after little more than 10 years of research on emotions in the workplace, organizational behavior scholars look to emotions as an important determinant of nearly every facet of workplace behavior. From interpersonal behavior, to team performance, and strategic decision-making in top management teams, researchers have argued that the role of emotions is fundamental to our understanding of these organizational processes. Research on emotions in the workplace has had a fast and furious growth, facilitated by a lack of critical reflection upon the limits of bounded emotionality as a framework for understanding individuals’ actions in organizations. It is undeniable that emotions influence some facets of organizational behavior. But the questions of interest in this chapter $
This chapter was written while the author was a visiting scholar at Duke University and a PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales.
Functionality, Intentionality and Morality Research on Emotion in Organizations, Volume 3, 1–30 Copyright r 2007 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1746-9791/doi:10.1016/S1746-9791(07)03001-5
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are, in which areas of organizational behavior do emotions play a critical role in the determination of individual and organizational outcomes and under what conditions? Research on emotions and organizational behavior has traditionally fallen into two very separate fields of scholarship, so ‘‘never the twain shall meet’’. The workplace environment has historically been treated as a unique social setting in which individuals’ behavior is rule-driven rather than spontaneous, and motivations to achieve clearly defined workplace goals overcome the distractions of personal ups and downs (see for example, Whyte, 1956). In short, the workplace has been conceptualized as an environment in which human behavior is cold and rational, bound only by incomplete information and the limits of human information processing capacity (Simon, 1957). The experience and expression of emotions, moods, and other affective states, on the other hand, have in the past been associated with ‘‘irrationality’’, lack of control, and dysfunctionality (Putnam & Mumby, 1993, for a review). Hence, emotions were not deemed to be relevant to understanding behavior within the organizational sphere. Relatively recently, however, scholars such as Kahneman, Snetsch, and Thaler (1991) and Weick (1979) shattered the divide between human behavior in the social and organizational worlds, opening the door for organizational behavior researchers to form impressions of the role of ‘‘social’’ phenomenon such as emotions within organizational settings. This ‘‘impressionist’’ period of organizational research, characterized by the integration of interdisciplinary knowledge into organizational research, has enriched our understanding of organizational processes and managerial effectiveness in a none but beneficial way; leaders are able to communicate more effectively with their subordinates, organizational cultures are becoming more positive, and managers are beginning to see the fiscal benefits of ensuring employees’ job satisfaction. Just as Monet gave way to Munch, however, early organizational research on emotions has developed into a field characterized by a conspicuous absence of boundary conditions, caveats, and limitations. It is the ‘‘expressionist’’ period in which I believe research on emotions in organizations currently resides, as conditions upon the functional impact of emotions in organizations are seldom imposed in this research. The aim of this chapter is, therefore, to impose some boundary conditions on the role of emotions, moods, and other affective states in organizational settings. Specifically, when do affective influences on cognition and behavior that typically manifest in social settings not automatically manifest
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in organizations in the same way? To begin, however, I will return to the ‘‘impressionist’’ period of research on emotions in organizations to uncover the original premises upon which research on the role of affect in organizations was justified, and review classic findings on the impact of emotions in organizations. From here, I will provide a brief critical review of the state of current research on emotions in organizations today, in its ‘‘expressionist’’ period. Finally, I will draw upon existing research on the processes by which affect influences cognition and behavior, and the conditions that moderate the outcomes of these processes, in order to identify the conditions under which the role of emotions in the workplace is consequential versus inconsequential.
THE IMPRESSIONIST PERIOD OF ORGANIZATIONAL RESEARCH ON EMOTIONS We are used to contrasting the intellect with our passions. The mistake is in thinking of our passions as merely occasional contents of life y they are the defining structures of our existence (Solomon, 1983, pp. 4–5).
The first evidence of research on emotions at work comes from the 15th century writings of Bernard du Rosier (1404–1475) (Mastenbroeck, 2000). And while a few instances of research on emotions in organizations were noted in the 1930s (see Mastenbroeck, 2000; Hersey, 1932), there was virtually no critical interest in the role of emotions in organizations again until very recently. In 1979, Karl Weick published his seminal article on cognitive processes in organizations and posed the question, ‘‘where’s the heat?’’, or the presence of emotion in cognitive models of organizational decision-making. Weick’s proposition that cognitive processes in organizations are more rule-driven and deliberate than those in the social world are not necessarily protected from the human emotions, gestated for almost 10 years before Mumby and Putnam (1992) delivered a product of his calling. Mumby and Putnam argued that organizational cognition and behavior is more aptly described as ‘‘bounded emotionality’’ than ‘‘bounded rationality’’, as suggested by Simon (1976). In contrast to the established notion that organizational members are rational actors whose decisions and behaviors are flawed only by the limits of human information processing capacity, Mumby and Putnam proposed that organizations are composed of emotional actors whose decisions and behavior are bound or guided by organizational systems, procedures, and rules. With this, the ‘‘myth of
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rationality’’ (Putnam & Mumby, 1993) was dispelled, opening the field of managerial science to a new way of thinking about organizational cognition and behavior. Contemporaneously, empirical and theoretical support for workplace behavior as bounded emotionality was provided by Hochschild (1983) and others (Rafaeli & Sutton, 1987, 1989; Sutton & Rafaeli, 1988; van Maanen & Kunda, 1989), who identified the presence of ‘‘emotional labor’’, or the active suppression of real emotions in favor of the expression of organizationally appropriate affective states in the services industry. This simple yet powerful insight – the very fact that employees must put ‘‘on’’ a smile at work logically infers that employees are having to ‘‘take off’’ a sad face or other expression of an emotional state that they are experiencing at work – not only fertilized Mumby and Putnam’s (1992) notion of bounded emotionality, but also gave rise to two questions of central importance to this period of research: what are the antecedents and what are the consequences of emotions in the workplace?
Early Impressions of the Role of Emotions in the Workplace So it was that organizational scholars began to take the study of emotions in work settings more seriously. In addition to Mumby and Putnam’s (1992), other significant contributions around this time were made by Albrow (1992), Baron (1993), George (1990), Isen and Baron (1991), and Wharton and Erickson (1995). Perhaps the most significant breakthrough in the field of emotion in organizations, however, was Weiss and Cropanzano’s (1996) Affective Events Theory (AET), a comprehensive review of the antecedents and consequences of moods and emotions in the workplace. The principles of AET are that (1) the workplace environment is a source of discrete ‘‘affective events’’ that generate moods, feelings, and emotions; (2) employee’s affective responses to these events subsequently affect their cognition and behavior; and (3) affective influences on cognition and behavior influence organizational decision-making, interpersonal functioning, selfcontrol, and consequently organizational outcomes. AET thus highlights the importance of recognizing both the emotionality of the workplace environment and the effects of workplace emotions on organizational outcomes. Antecedents of Emotions in Organizations While moods and emotions are distinct affective states (Frijda, 2000), they are both elicited in response to ‘‘affective events’’: situations, objects, or
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events that are perceived to be a threat to or opportunity for the attainment of personal goals (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). According to Weiss and Cropanzano’s (1996) AET, the workplace is fertile ground for the induction of moods and emotions, as workplace satisfaction and personal well-being are directly affected by individuals’ ability to achieve their workplace goals. Since individual’s goals are subjective and situation-dependent, virtually any workplace event can elicit an affective response, as long as it is perceived by the individual to affect their ability to achieve their personal goals, whatever they may be. As such, it is conceivable that even events such as photocopier jams, and computer crashes can directly affect employees’ moods and emotions (Ashkanasy & Daus, 2002). In general, however, empirical research has demonstrated that affective events, or antecedents of moods and emotions in the workplace include stressful or aversive workplace stimuli, characteristics of the physical setting, leader–member exchanges, and work team dynamics (for a full review, see Brief & Weiss, 2002). Common examples of stressful workplace events include conflicting role demands (Williams, Suls, Alliger, Lerner, & Wan, 1991), cognitive strain (Bodrov, 2000), time pressure (Baber, Mellor, Graham, Noyes, & Tunley, 1996), negotiating with administration (Hart, Wearing, & Headey, 1995), and physically threatening conditions (such as nursing patients with contagious disease; see George, Reed, Ballard, Colin, & Felding, 1993). As such, stressful workplace events may be interpersonal, emotional, cognitive, or physical (Lazarus, 1999). Stress-related workplace events are associated with the experience of negative affective states arising from the perception of a threat to the attainment of personal goals (Ashkanasy, Ashton-James, & Jordan, 2005). Thus, to the extent that workplace goals are relevant to personal goals (for example, getting a promotion achieves both a workplace goal as well as a personal goal to achieve more wealth), progress towards workplace goals will affect employee stress. Wasserman, Rafaeli, and Kluger (2000) have demonstrated that the aesthetics of physical settings in organizations also affect organizational members’ affective states. In their study, research participants reacting to photographs of eclectic and visually stimulating interior design reported positive affective states, whereas participants’ reactions to monomorphic interior designs were considerably more negative. Similarly, research in consumer behavior has found that pleasant scents induce positive affect, and trigger positive appraisals of the organizational environment (Bartoshuk, 1991; Chebat & Michon, 2003; Danghel, 1996). The impact of pleasant odors on affect and cognition has been demonstrated in research on the spending behavior of consumers in various sensory conditions. Chebat and
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Michon (2003) found that consumers spent more money in environments with pleasant smells, and that the impact of pleasant smells on spending behavior was mediated by positive perceptions of the environment (see also Spangenberg, Crowley, & Henderson, 1996). Oldham, Cummings, Mischel, Schmidke, and Zhou (1995) observed similarly that positively valenced music improved the mood states of workers. Indeed, the impact of aural stimuli on mood states has been researched extensively (Knobloch & Zillmann, 2002; Matsumoto, 2002; Stratton & Zalanowski, 2003). Research on the effects of unpleasant noise on affect in the workplace converges on the conclusion that unwanted and unescapable noise heightens anxiety and stress (Bouscein & Ottmann, 1996; Gilbert, Meliska, & Plath, 1997; Smith & Berg, 1987). For example, Becker, Warm, Dember, and Hancock (1995) found that jet engine noise increased perceived workload of pilots. Similarly, Vickers and Hervig (1991) observed that the mood and well-being of passengers on US naval ships were negatively affected during low-frequency active sonar operations. The importance of the forgoing research on the subtle environmental antecedents of moods and emotions in organizational settings becomes clear in consideration of the impact of affective states on cognition, behavior, and organizational outcomes. While there is little research evidence on the impact of visual, olfactory, and aural stimuli on workplace performance, it is expected that sensory stimuli may indirectly impact upon workplace activity via its effect on employee’s mood states. More observable, and more manageable antecedents of affect on organizations include work group and leadership characteristics. The pervasiveness of work group effects on member affect has been demonstrated by Barsade (2002) and Kelly and Barsade (2001). Several explanations have been proposed to explain affective processes within groups, including common socialization patterns and workplace conditions (Hackman, 1992), high task interdependence (Heath & Jourden, 1997), membership stability (Bartel & Saavedra, 2000), mood regulation norms and rules (Sutton, 1991), and emotional contagion (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994). Irrespective of the underlying process, nevertheless, it is clear that affect has a pervasive and powerful effect in groups within organizational settings. A leader’s display of emotion may also have a powerful impact upon employees’ affective states (George, 1996, 2000). According to George (1996), ‘‘Leaders who feel excited, enthusiastic, and energetic themselves are likely to similarly energize their followers, as are leaders who feel distressed and hostile likely to negatively activate their followers’’ (p. 84).
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Furthermore, the emotional displays of leaders during periods of uncertainty or ambiguity, such as during organizational change, moderate employees’ interpretation of organizational events (Pescosolido, 2002). Consequences of Emotions in Organizations Ashkanasy (2003) (see also, Ashkanasy & Ashton-James, 2006) points out that there are five levels of affective influence within organizations: (1) within-person, (2) between-persons (individual differences), (3) interpersonal relationships (dyads), (4) groups, and (5) the organization as a whole. Each level of analysis is associated with a different impact on organizational processes and performance. The within-person level of analysis (level 1) is primarily concerned with the effect of moods, emotions, and other affective states on individuals’ evaluative judgments and thought processes. Hence, this level of research investigates the consequences of affect for individual’s (managers or employees) performance. The between-person level of analysis (level 2) concerns the impact of stable individual differences in trait affect and emotional intelligence on individual performance, interpersonal interactions, and group functioning. Hence, this second level of affective influence has implications for multiple levels of organizational functioning. The dyadic level of analysis (level 3) investigates affective influences on interpersonal processes in the workplace such as negotiations, leader–member exchanges, peer communication, and customer service. Hence, affective influences on interpersonal processes in organizations have the potential to affect not only individual performance, but also organizational-level outcomes. The group level of analysis (level 4) concerns the way the individuals’ affective states and traits influence group-level affect, and how group affect impacts upon group functioning. The ease with which groups can share knowledge, provide feedback, and reach consensus has a critical impact on the quality of group decision outcomes. Finally, the organization-level analysis (level 5) of affective influences in the workplace looks at the affectivity of organizational culture. Organizational culture is a determinant of organizational loyalty, commitment, trust, and job satisfaction and hence at this level of analysis, affect may influence organizational outcomes such as absenteeism, workplace deviance, turnover, and other factors that are directly associated with organizational performance. At the within-person level of analysis, moods and emotions influence the way the organizational members cognitively evaluate and process information. The primary finding regarding the impact of emotions and moods on the evaluative judgments is mood congruence: if you are in a positive mood, your evaluation of situational cues is optimistic or positive, and your
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corresponding judgments and decisions are more positive. For example, when in a happy mood, people form more positive impressions of others (Forgas & Bower, 1987; Forgas, Bower, & Krantz, 1984), and make more optimistic risk assessments (Learner & Keltner, 2000). When in a negative mood, on the other hand, people are more likely to make more pessimistic risk assessments (Mittal & Ross, 1998), and evaluate people and situations more negatively (Forgas & Bower, 1987). Consequently, when in a positive affective state, people may be more optimistic, entrepreneurial, and take more risks in a positive mood as their perception and assessment of situations is biased towards positive rather than negative situational cues. In a negative affective state, however, people tend to be more cautious and risk-averse as their attention is directed toward negative situational features (see Ashton-James & Ashkanasy, 2005, for a review). Organizational research investigating the impact of affect on individual performance has tended to focus on the mood-congruent effects of affective states on evaluative outcomes such as those reviewed above. While moodcongruence is certainly a well-demonstrated phenomenon, however, more recent research argues that this is neither the central nor the dominant effect of affective states on organizational performance (Ashkanasy & Ashton-James, 2006; Forgas, 2002). As noted by Fiedler (2001) and others (Bless, 2002; Clore, Gasper, & Garvin, 2001; Forgas, 1995), positive and negative affect are associated with ‘‘fundamentally dichotomous’’ information processing styles. Positive affect facilitates information processing strategies that are characterized by speed and efficiency. For example, happy organizational members are more likely to use a ‘‘heuristic’’ information processing strategy (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993), relying on well-established rules of thumb or decision rules to guide the interpretation of complex information. Sad organizational members, on the other hand, tend to process information more systematically or analytically, attending to and carefully evaluating individual units of information and relating each new piece of information back to existing knowledge stores (Bodenhausen, Kramer, & Susser, 1994; Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). The terms ‘‘assimilation versus accommodation’’ (Fiedler, 2001), and ‘‘relational versus referential’’ (Clore et al., 2001) are also frequently used to describe essentially the same effects of positive versus negative affect on information processing strategies. The influence of individuals’ affective states on the content and information processing of judgments and decisions has important implications for organizational functioning. Isen has demonstrated that positive affect predicts greater creativity and cognitive flexibility (Isen & Daubman, 1984; Isen, Daubman, & Nowicki, 1987; Isen, Johnson, Mertz, & Robinson,
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1985). Isen (2002) also argues that positive mood is connected to a reduced number of self-related, task-irrelevant cognitions, and consequently facilitates task involvement and attention to task demands. As such, positive mood may enhance individual’s performance on tasks for which creativity and cognitive flexibility are required, such as product design and innovation. On the other hand, Staw and Barsade (1993) and George (1990) provide evidence to suggest that employees in a negative affective state are ‘‘sadder-but-wiser’’. People in a negative affective state demonstrate a tendency to be more vigilant in their monitoring of environmental stimuli (Forgas, 1995), less susceptible to persuasion (Forgas & East, 2003) and bias (Forgas & George, 2001), and more realistic in their probability estimates (Alloy, Abramson, & Viscusi, 1981). Not all individuals are affected by opportunities and threats equally in organizational settings. Individual differences (the second level of analysis) moderate the frequency, intensity, and duration of the experience of positive and negative affective states. Trait affect, for example, represents a personal disposition to be in a long-term positive or negative affective state (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). People with positive or negative trait affect display the cognitive and behavioral tendencies that are associated with being in a positive or negative affective state on a continual, dispositional basis rather than as a consequence of a temporary fluctuation in affect. While there is little evidence for a positive correlation between negative trait affect and organizational performance, this does not preclude the possibility that trait negative affect, like state negative affect, may contribute to positive organizational outcomes. By analogy with the impact of negative affective states on cognitive functioning in the workplace, it may be that the benefits of trait negative affect depend on the situation and task in which the individual is involved. For example, in organizational situations that require vigilant processing of situational cues and convergent, analytic thinking, an individual with dispositional negative affect may demonstrate consistently accurate and reliable performance, while an individual with trait positive affect may be less scrupulous and cautious in their judgments. Similarly, while an individual with trait positive affect may demonstrate better interpersonal skills and leadership, people with dispositional negative affect may be more persistent in bargaining and negotiations, and less susceptible to persuasion (Forgas, 1999; Forgas & East, 2003). Emotional intelligence, an individual difference in one’s ability to perceive, to use (assimilate), to understand, and to manage or regulate one’s own and others’ moods and emotions (Mayer & Salovey, 1997), also accounts for between-person variation in individual’s emotional and subsequent
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behavior. More specifically, Mayer and Salovey (1997) have defined emotional intelligence in terms of four ‘‘branches’’ or abilities: (1) to perceive emotions in self and others, (2) to assimilate the information in cognitive functioning, (3) to understand the role of emotions, and (4) to use and to manage emotions in decision-making. The net effect of this is that emotional intelligence can be represented as a personal disposition that moderates an individual’s capacity to deal with their emotions and emotional cues in organizations, which is linked with several organizational outcomes. Jordan and Troth (2004), for example, found that the ability to manage emotions is associated with a collaborative conflict resolution style, leading to work-group cohesion and ultimately greater team performance. Ashkanasy and Tse (2000) and others (Dasborough & Ashkanasy, 2002) have demonstrated that leadership competence is also related to one’s ability to manage emotions. As such, emotional intelligence is theorized to have a positive effect on the organizational outcomes of work-group cohesion, congruence between self- and supervisor appraisals of performance, employee performance, organizational commitment, and organizational citizenship. As theorized by Weiss and Cropanzano (AET; 1996), positive and negative affective events influence not only the way in which people evaluate and process information, but in turn affects people’s interpersonal behaviors in these situations (level 3). For example, Forgas and colleagues have demonstrated that positive and negative moods influence the valence of people’s performance appraisals (Forgas et al., 1984), the directness of interpersonal communication (Forgas, 1998), and the politeness of communication strategies (Forgas, 1999), and further, the way in which feedback is interpreted (Bower & Forgas, 2001). In addition, the way in which positive or negative feedback is interpreted or received by the employee may be influenced by concurrent mood state. Forgas and Moylan (1991) studied the impact of people’s mood on perceptions of current events and found a mood congruent effect, such that people in a negative or sad mood perceived social events more negatively than people in a positive mood. This research suggests that ambiguous performance feedback may be perceived more negatively and depreciatively by an employee in a negative mood than a positive mood. Research suggests that negative or depreciatory feedback leads to decreased motivation, job dissatisfaction (Bailey & Thompson, 2000), and decreased self-efficacy (Baron, 1988). Thus, the mood state of the manager while formulating performance feedback, and of the employee receiving the performance feedback, has potentially significant implications for organizational functioning.
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Requesting and negotiations are also common interpersonal organizational encounters that have potentially important outcomes for an individual’s ability to achieve workplace goals: if a request is made in a direct, or impolite manner, a colleague will be less likely to comply with the request than if it is carefully formulated and enacted. Further, conflict is an unavoidable feature of organizational life, and face-to-face negotiation is perhaps the most common and constructive method for resolving differences between people and between groups. With regards to affective influences on request formulations, Forgas (1998, 1999) found that people in a positive affective state adopt a more confident and direct requesting style, which is congruent with their positive interpretation of situational demands, while negative affect resulted in significantly more polite, elaborate, and cautious request forms than did positive affect. Similarly, with respect to negotiation encounters, several researchers (Baron, 1990; Carnevale & Isen, 1986; Forgas, 1998) have found that affect is an important source of bias in the negotiation process. Carnevale and Isen (1986) found that individuals experiencing positive affect are less likely to adopt contentious negotiating strategies than others. Furthermore, Baron (1990) and Forgas (1998) found that individuals in a positive mood are more conciliatory, make more concessions, and are more likely to reach a compromise than people in a negative mood. In a follow-up study, Forgas (1998) demonstrated that happy people are more confident during the negotiation process, are more assertive and persistent in reaching their desired goals, behave more cooperatively, and are more willing to use integrative strategies and make reciprocal deals than were those in a negative mood. Groups (level 4) introduce additional dimensions of complexity to the discussion of emotions in workplace settings. De Dreu, West, Fischer, and MacCurtain (2001) see group settings as a sort of emotional incubator, where the emotional states of the group members combine to produce an overall group-level emotional tenor that, in turn, affects all group members. Kelly and Barsade (2001) argue more specifically that teams possess an ‘‘affective composition’’ or a group mood, which begins either with the emotional characteristics of team members, and then develops through a process of emotional contagion (see also Barsade, 2002; Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1992), or the emotional expression of the group leader, which evokes emotion in group members. In a recent study, Barsade, Ward, Turner, and Sonnenfeld (2000) found that work groups low in mean positive affect experienced significantly more task and emotional conflict and less cooperation and group cohesion than groups high in mean positive affect. Congruent with this finding, Barsade
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(2002) found that positive emotional contagion in groups was related to increased perceived task performance, improved cooperation, and decreased conflict. As such, positive emotion is a necessary precursor of group cohesiveness and productivity. In the context of organizational work groups, George (1990) has shown that positive affect is a key ingredient for group effectiveness and satisfaction (see also George & Brief, 1992). Lawler, Thye, and Yoon (2000) have also found that positive emotion solidifies and strengthens the person–group bond and decreases uncertainty, and as a result increases commitment to work team goals, while negative affect may decrease team cohesion, motivation, and potentially impair performance. Although few studies have focused on the impact of emotions on leader– member exchanges (level 4), one clear implication of these leader member exchange (LMX) studies is that higher quality relationships between leaders and members are associated with positive emotions. As noted earlier, Newcombe and Ashkanasy (2002) demonstrated just this effect. Respondents who viewed vignettes of leaders giving performance appraisal feedback were judged more favorably on an LMX measure when they displayed positive emotion. The data suggest that a leader’s displayed emotion is a critical determinant of the quality of relationships with group members, and consequently of the leader’s ability to communicate emotionally evocative symbols. Finally, at level 5, the consequences of positive and negative emotion at the other levels of analysis contribute to the emotional climate of the organization, the collective mood of organizational members toward their jobs, the organization, and management (Ha¨rtel, Gough, & Ha¨rtel, 2006; Reichers & Schneider, 1990), and constitute the collective mood of organizational members toward their jobs, the organization, and management. The concept is distinct from organizational culture, in that climate is essentially an emotional phenomenon, while culture is more stable, and rooted in beliefs, values, and embedded assumptions (Ashkanasy, Wilderom, & Peterson, 2000; Ott, 1989; Schein, 1985). Nonetheless, Schein makes it clear that assumptions underlying organizational culture are associated with deeply felt feelings. Thus, as argued by Beyer and Nin˜o (2001), organizational culture and organizational members’ emotional views and states are intimately and reciprocally related. As such, both organizational climate and organizational culture have emotional underpinnings, and emotional consequences. Ha¨rtel, Hsu, and Boyle (2002), and Kelly and Barsade (2001) are amongst recent authors who have emphasized the close connections between organizational-level policies and group and personal emotional outcomes. Further and consistent with the principles of AET (Weiss &
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Cropanzano, 1996), Ashkanasy (2003) argues that organizational members’ affective states are influenced by emotional climate cues which in turn shape their evaluative judgments, information processing, interpersonal behavior, group affective tone, and leader–member exchanges. Supporting this argument, results of Ha¨rtel et al. (2006) empirical study of service providers showed that work group emotional climate accounted for 44% of the variance in the momentary job satisfaction of providers following a service encounter, suggesting that a positive emotional climate is important for maintaining job satisfaction. On the basis of this review, it is clear that emotions and moods have important consequences for organizations, at multiple levels of analysis. However, the demonstrated impact of affect in these domains of organizational functioning does not imply that affect is essential to our understanding of these processes. There are several boundary conditions on the impact of individuals’ affective states on organizational outcomes that are too often ignored in the discussion of emotions research. As discussed further below, the conditions under which the forgoing consequences of affect will manifest in the workplace are actually fairly limited. Blind to the boundary conditions upon the role of emotion in organizations, emotions research has been led astray from its original modus operandi: to understand anomalous organizational decision-making and behavior that could not be explained by existing structural and ‘‘rational’’ decision-making models. Rather, current organizational research on emotions seems to assume that organizational processes necessarily involve emotions, and that these emotions play a fundamental, explanatory role in these processes. The impressionist period of research on emotions in organizations was a good thing; acknowledging the presence and potential impact of emotions in organizations has expanded our understanding of the richness of organizational life and given nuance to ‘‘rational’’ models of organizational performance. Contrary to popular myth, however, you can sometimes have too much of a good thing.
THE EXPRESSIONIST PERIOD: BOUNDLESS EMOTION IN THE WORKPLACE Emotion is fundamental to almost all aspects of workplace behavior (Briner, 1999, p. 323)
One would be justified in arriving at this conclusion given the vast spectrum of research on emotions in the workplace that has been published in recent
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years. Emotions have been proffered as a fundamental component of nearly every facet of organizational behavior and performance, from clearly emotion-relevant domains such as creativity, job satisfaction, transformational leadership, and interpersonal functioning, to opaquely-related domains such as environmental consciousness, information management, organizational justice, and organizational design. While it is certainly the case that each of the latter areas of organizational research may affect individuals’ emotional state, it is not necessarily the case that individuals’ emotions are critical or fundamental to our understanding of these organizational phenomena. That is, individuals’ emotions are not likely to be the most useful explanatory variables within these areas of organizational research, and hence are not critical to our understanding or management of these organizational constructs. From my observations of current research on emotion in organizations being presented at conferences, being proposed for dissertations, and being discussed on email list servers, there appears to be a glaring lack of thoughtful reflection upon the theoretical and practical relevance of emotions to the phenomena under investigation. The fact that emotions are present in a situation under observation and correlate or co-occur with organizational outcomes does not mean that emotions are determining those outcomes, nor does it indicate that emotions can explain variation in these outcomes. It simply means that emotions are present, and emotions vary in predictable ways in response to changes in the organizational environment. For example, when office temperature cools, cognitive processing slows, mood becomes negative (Keller et al., 2005), and productivity is compromised (Hedge, 2006). What is the most theoretically and practically relevant explanatory variable in this case: cognitive processing speed or mood? Temperature affects both mood and cognitive processing, and it is true that mood does affect cognitive processing, as discussed above, but it is cognitive processing speed and not mood that is affecting productivity in this case, and temperature is sufficient to affect cognitive processing speed in the absence of mood. So, while negative mood cooccurs with low temperatures, and may at best play an ancillary role in temperature effects on office worker productivity, it is by no means fundamental or integral to the process by which temperature affects work performance. Actual cases of scholars investigating inessential mood effects abound in journals, and thrive in conference proceedings. The purpose of this chapter is not to derogate specific research agendas, but rather to stimulate scholars of emotion in organizations to critically reflect upon the reasoning behind
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their examination of affect within their own research agendas. Why is it that organizational scholars are so seemingly enamored with human emotions as an explanatory variable in organizational research? It is a testament to the compelling and undeniable quality of the ‘‘impressionists’’ work on emotions in organizations, a portion of which is reviewed above. Like the ‘‘impressionist’’ painters, Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, our impressionist emotions researchers were critical, exact, thorough, and controlled. The impact of emotions on specific organization-relevant cognitive processes and behaviors were experimentally tested in controlled conditions on the basis of sound theoretical reasoning, and conclusions were logically and moderately inferred from empirical data. Most importantly, however, boundary conditions on the predictive validity and generalizability of findings were acknowledged and imposed: the ‘‘it depends’’ clause was in active use. Not so, in current expositions. Organizational scholars have rushed into emotions research like moths to a flame, and in their haste, they have in some instances not thought through the utility of their research contributions.
THE END OF EXPRESSIONISM: MINIMIZING THE ROLE OF EMOTIONS IN ORGANIZATIONS Emotionality and rationality are interpenetrated, emotions are an integral and inseparable part of organizational life y (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1995, p. 97)
How much truth can we extract from this proud statement that has resonated throughout the literature on emotions in organizations (see Ashkanasy, Zerbe, & Hartel, 2002)? There are two propositions embedded within this assertion, the validity of which will be addressed in turn. First, I will discuss the notion that ‘‘emotionality and rationality are interpenetrated’’, second, I will take into critical consideration the idea that ‘‘emotions are an integral and inseparable part of organizational life’’.
Affect Infusion: The Interpenetration of Emotionality and Rationality A confluence of research from multiple research disciples including social psychology, neurobiology, and cognitive science concurs that affective processes support the direction of attention to environmental opportunities and threats, guide decision-making, initiate learning, and trigger behavior
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(Cacciopo, Gardner, & Berntson, 1999; Schwarz & Clore, 1983, 1996; Damasio, 1994; Forgas, 1995). No one would deny that affective (‘‘emotional’’) and cognitive (‘‘rational’’) processes are often inextricably linked; affective information is automatically integrated and infused with mental knowledge structures during information processing (Adolphs & Damasio, 2001; Ochsner & Feldman Barrett, 2000; Panksepp, 1998). Affect priming theory (Bower, 1981) and the affect-as-information model (Schwarz & Clore, 1983) are perhaps the most empirically supported explanatory models of how ‘‘emotionality’’ integrates ‘‘rationality’’. The affect priming account of affective influences on cognition is based on an associative network model of mental representation (Bower, 1981; Isen, Shalker, Clark, & Karp, 1978). Fundamental to this model is the assumption that affective and cognitive representations are linked in an associative semantic network. Within this framework, thought occurs via the spreading activation of nodes within the network. A consequence of this is that activation of affective nodes can spread to non-affective cognitive nodes through associative connections (Forgas, 2002). Hence, affect can infuse judgments by facilitating or priming access to related cognitive categories (Bower, 1981, Isen, 1987). As such, judgment and decision processes that rely on recall processes may be influenced by affect such that affect-congruent memories are more easily remembered and utilized in the decision-making process than information that is associated with an incongruent mood. Consequently, as discussed previously, people in a positive mood may be more optimistic, entrepreneurial, and take more risks in a positive mood as their perception and assessment of situations is biased towards positive rather than negative situational cues. In a negative mood, however, people tend to be more cautious, as their attention is directed toward negative situational features. The affect priming account suggests an indirect influence of affect on judgments, via the priming of affect-congruent semantic categories. Moods and emotions may, however, also have direct informational effects on judgments, serving as a heuristic cue from which to make inferences. For example, when presented with a judgmental target, instead of deriving a response from a constructive, elaborate information search, people may simply ask themselves, ‘‘how do I feel about it?’’ and base their judgments on their current affective state (Schwarz, 1990). Thus, the affectas-information approach assumes that emotional feelings serve as affective feedback that guides judgment, decision-making, and information processing ( Clore et al., 2001). Evidence consistent with this idea comes from studies of brain-damaged patients (Damasio, 1994), which suggest that the
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ability to detect and use such affective information may be necessary to pursue any goal-directed activity successfully. The affect-as-information model also offers a parsimonious explanation of the information processing effects of moods and emotions. Clore and colleagues (2001) explain such effects by suggesting that affective feelings may serve as task-relevant feedback (see also, Carver & Scheier, 1990). They reasoned that because positive affect indicates that a situation is safe, people may see little need to expend cognitive effort (unless triggered by other currently active goals) so that they engage in heuristic or ‘‘top-down’’ processing. But when negative affect indicates that a situation is problematic, it motivates more effortful, systematic processing, or ‘‘bottom-up’’. As such, the affect-as-information model assumes that cognitive processing styles are tuned to meet the processing requirements signaled by one’s affective state (Schwarz & Clore, 1996; Clore, Schwarz, & Conway, 1994). However, as explained further below, the fact that affective processes spill into ‘‘rational’’ cognitive processes does not mean that affect will always have a manifest impact on cognitive outcomes. By analogy, a pinch of salt is used in many recipes to control the inflation of yeast, but the presence or involvement of this pinch of salt does not manifest an effect upon the flavor of the final product. It is only when a teaspoon of salt is spilt into the mixture that it will significantly affect the quality of the outcome. Similarly, the impact of affect on cognition and behavior is dependent upon the amount that is infused. As demonstrated by Forgas (1995) and others (Fiedler & Stroehm, 1986; Forgas, 1992, 1993; Forgas & Bower, 1987), the extent to which individuals’ affective states contribute to or ‘‘infuse’’ cognitive and behavioral outcomes depends upon the method by which information is processed. Generally, the more integrative and effortful the processing strategy, the greater the affect infusion. That is, the more the salt is added to the pot, and the more it is stirred, the more pronounced and reliable its effect. In his Affect Infusion Model (AIM; 1995), Forgas identifies four information processing strategies that differ in terms of their use of cognitive resources (effort) and their constructiveness (the integration of affective and other information sources): (1) direct access processing is a low-effort processing strategy with low-affect integration associated with familiar, simple, or rule-based tasks; (2) motivated processing is an effortful, but not particularly integrative processing strategy that is associated with goaldriven, outcome-focused tasks; (3) heuristic processing is a low-effort but integrative strategy that is commonly used to make ‘‘intuitive’’ decisions, or
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decisions on the basis of limited information or time; and (4) substantive processing is effortful and integrative. Most cognitive tasks involve each of these information-processing strategies to different degrees. However, as mentioned above, affect infusion increases as a function of effort and affect integration. As such, the extent to which ‘‘emotions are an integral and inseparable part of organizational life’’ depends on the extent to which heuristic and substantive information processing is used in each domain of organizational functioning. As discussed above, affect is least likely to influence tasks that involve direct access or motivated processing, and most likely to affect tasks that involve heuristic and/or substantive processing (Forgas, 1995). The question, therefore, is, when are these integrative information processing strategies most likely to be utilized in organizational contexts?
Emotions in Organizational Life: Integral or Inconsequential? Several features of the task, person, and situation will determine the extent to which heuristic and substantive processing is employed by organizational members and, consequently, the extent to which their affective states have a manifest impact on their performance. Heuristic processing is a ‘‘cognitive short-cut’’ that allows people to respond to situations efficiently by formulating judgments and decisions based on pre-existing, related knowledge rather than systematically observing situational cues. As such, heuristic processing is used predominantly when information processing is constrained by features of the task such as time constraints that prevent one from processing situational cues systematically (Payne, Bettman, & Johnson, 1988), or when judgments must be made on the basis of incomplete information or informational uncertainty (Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982). In an organizational setting, heuristic processing strategies are most likely to be used to make evaluative judgments, which are characteristically formed spontaneously with incomplete information (Newman & Uleman, 1990). As such, performance evaluations, recruitment and promotion decisions, risk assessments, and financial decision-making – just a sample of organizational tasks that are characterized by incomplete information (uncertainty) and time constraints – are likely to be infused and influenced by affect. On the other hand, heuristic processing is not likely to be used to form evaluations that are criteria or rule-based, as such ‘‘objective’’
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judgments and decisions will utilize direct access or motivated processing strategies. Hence, the affective states of organizational members will not influence workplace functioning for these tasks. Substantive processing, also associated with affect infusion, is used when situational cues do not easily fit into pre-formed knowledge structures. Organizational tasks that are most likely to require substantive information processing are characteristically novel, unfamiliar, complex, or difficult. Basically, tasks that require effortful, detail-oriented information processing will utilize substantive information processing, and hence will be susceptible to affect infusion (Forgas, 2002). For example, Forgas (1998, 1999) found that participants’ request formulations were only affected by their affective states when the requesting task was unfamiliar, novel, or difficult. When participants were asked to make a familiar, everyday request for which they had a pre-existing behavioral script, their affective states did not influence the politeness of their requesting behavior. The extent to which substantive information processing is used to perform an organizational task may be moderated by features of the situation and individual differences. For example, when performing a relatively simple task in public, evaluation apprehension triggers effortful, substantive processing (Zajonc, 1980), increasing the extent to which affective states will influence performance outcomes. Similarly, accountability for one’s judgments and behaviors in the workplace will, perhaps counterintuitively, increase the extent to which emotions may influence decision outcomes (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999). As such, privacy, confidentiality, and anonymity of one’s workplace performance should have the reverse effect, reducing the impact of moods and emotions on organizational outcomes by encouraging less substantive information processing. Individual differences that influence processing strategies, and consequently whether emotions have a significant or insignificant effect on organizational outcomes include need for cognition, expertise, and personal relevance. Need for cognition is an individual difference variable referring to one’s tendency to engage in and enjoy effortful cognitive endeavors (Cacciopo & Petty, 1982). Individuals low in need for cognition are thought to possess low intrinsic motivation to engage in effortful cognition (‘‘cognitive misers’’), whereas individuals high in need for cognition tend to possess a high intrinsic motivation to exercise their mental faculties (‘‘chronic cognizers’’). Consequently, individuals low in need for cognition are not likely to show mood effects on their cognition and behavior at work, because direct-access and motivated processing strategies are more
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likely to be employed regardless of task demands (Wegener & Petty, 1994). The impact of need for cognition on mood effects was demonstrated by Wegener and Petty (1994) in a study on attitude change. They predicted that participants in a happy mood were more likely to evaluate arguments more positively than sad participants, leading to greater susceptibility to persuasion attempts. However, these predicted mood effects on persuasion were only found for participants who were high in need for cognition. There was no impact of mood on susceptibility to persuasion for participants who were low in need for cognition. Forgas and Tehani (2005) recently conducted a series of studies investigating the impact of mood (positive versus negative) and expertise (manager versus subordinate) on the skill with which performance feedback was delivered. The effectiveness of performance feedback depends to a large extent upon the valence of the feedback; negative or depreciatory feedback leaves employees feeling a lack of self-efficacy or helplessness, while positive or uplifting feedback inspires employees to work harder (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996). Consistent with the affect priming model described above, it may be expected that positive mood would lead to the delivery of more positive, effective performance feedback, while a sad mood would lead to more negative, ineffective feedback. However, Forgas and Tehani (2005) found that mood only influenced the feedback of subordinates (novices) in this mood-congruent way. The valence of performance feedback provided by managers who had over 5 years experience in this role was unaffected by their mood state. Forgas and Tehani explain this finding in terms of differences in the information processing demands of this verbal communication task for experts versus novices. Experts were able to use direct access processing to retrieve a pre-existing behavioral script for the delivery of effective performance feedback, and hence were less likely to be biased by affective priming, or to use their ‘‘affect as information’’. For novices, on the other hand, this task required more elaborative, effortful information processing, as it was unfamiliar and difficult. Consequently, novices demonstrated classic mood effects on organizational performance. The relevance of a task to personal goals also influences the information processing strategy that individuals use in organizational settings. Individuals are motivated to ‘‘think harder’’, or engage in more substantive information processing when one’s performance has meaningful consequences for one’s own well being (Gendolla, 1999; Maheswaren & Chaiken, 1991; Rothman & Schwarz, 1998). Ironically, therefore, according to the AIM (Forgas, 1995), people are more susceptible to affective bias
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when working on a task in which they are personally invested (Forgas & Fiedler, 1996). Consequently, within an organizational setting, employees’ affective states will influence their workplace behavior to the extent that their personal and workplace goals are aligned. It is expected, therefore, that moods and emotions will play a less integral role in the workplace performance of organizational members with low commitment to the organization than that of organizational members with high organizational commitment. Finally, the influence of affect on task performance depends on awareness. As demonstrated by Isbell and Wyer (1999), when one’s affective state is brought to their attention, the mood effects disappeared. Furthermore, mood effects on judgments and behavior are eliminated if the cause of one’s affective state is made salient, and this source of affect is task-irrelevant. For example, Keltner, Locke, and Audrain (1993) and others (Schwarz, Servay, & Kumpf, 1985) found that when a plausible cause for participants’ mood (i.e. the weather) was brought to their attention, their evaluative judgments were no longer mood-congruent. There are, therefore, several features of the task, person, and situation that act as limiting conditions on ‘‘bounded emotionality’’ with which we approach decision-making, group work and interpersonal behavior in the workplace. While it is true that ‘‘emotionality and rationality are interpenetrated’’, and even intrinsically linked, emotions and moods are not necessarily an ‘‘integral and inseparable part of organizational life’’; affect does not always have a manifest impact on cognition and behavior in the workplace. The extent to which affect infuses organizational cognition and behavior is directly associated with the amount of affective information that is ‘‘mixed in’’ during information processing. As discussed in the forgoing section, the more elaborate or substantive the information processing strategy, the more affect is infused into the outcome. As such, organizational tasks that do not require substantive information processing, due to their familiarity, simplicity, or rule-based structure, are not likely to be significantly affected by the moods and emotions of organizational members. In addition, tasks that are typically completed anonymously, privately, or without accountability are not necessarily going to be influenced by affective states. Similarly, the performance of tasks in which employees are not intrinsically interested or that have no personal relevance also tend not to be affected by individuals’ mood states. Finally, as long as employees or managers are aware that their affective state is not task related (i.e. caused by a domestic dispute or traffic on the way to work rather than a workplace
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success or failure), their rationality is not likely to be unduly influenced by such emotionality.
TO MODERNISM! THE MINIMALIST NATURE OF EMOTIONS IN ORGANIZATIONS What now for research on emotions in organizations? After careful examination of the conditions under which moods and emotions will leave their mark on the organizational canvas, a rather minimalist role for emotions in organizations has been painted. Affect will make its mark on organizational life when task performance requires or motivates the use of heuristic or substantive information processing strategies, both of which facilitate affect infusion. Outside of these boundary conditions, affective states may be present but will not necessarily have a meaningful impact on organizational outcomes. What are the implications of this new, minimalist picture of emotions in organizations for research and practice? The conditions of bounded emotionality also provide a framework within which to examine the external validity of experimental research findings, as well as the generalizability of field research. Experimental research investigating the impact of affect on cognition in a laboratory setting with undergraduate research participants may not necessarily be relevant to understanding emotional influences on organizational cognition and behavior in the workplace setting, in which the personal relevance of task performance may (or may not) be greater, individuals may be accountable for the quality and quantity of their work, no matter how simple or complex, and tasks may be more (or less) familiar. Similarly, organizational research on emotions that is conducted at a specific organization will not necessarily produce results that are generalizable to other organizations that may not have comparable task designs and levels of organizational commitment. Whatever the research – theoretical, qualitative, or quantitative – it is important to evaluate the external validity and reliability of each piece of research on emotions individually, with a critical eye to the conditions under which the research findings may or may not apply in different organizational settings. Theoretical perspectives on the role and impact of emotions in the workplace have been widely debated in the economic, strategic management, and organizational cognition literature (Hanoch, 2002; Kaufman, 1999; Pixley, 2002; Maitlis & Ozcelik, 2004; Venkatesh & Speier, 1999). It is hoped that this chapter will contribute structure and clarity to this ongoing
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discourse by making the statement that the role of emotions in organizations is conditional, not fundamental.
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CHAPTER 2 THE USE, OVERUSE, AND MISUSE OF AFFECT, MOOD, AND EMOTION IN ORGANIZATIONAL RESEARCH Ve´ronique Tran ABSTRACT Affective phenomena have become increasingly visible in the organizational behavior literature. Definitions and differentiation between affect, mood, and emotion are provided, based on psychological research in the affective sciences. Yet, both theoretically and empirically, these three constructs are still treated interchangeably. Given the operationalization confusion, there may be more findings on discrete emotions than actually reported. The body of knowledge on discrete emotions, namely their specific functions, could be better integrated and would enrich organizational research. Consequently, the challenge of achieving clarity in defining and operationalizing affect, mood and emotion is discussed.
Affective phenomena are increasingly visible in the organizational literature, and have gained significant legitimacy as a research domain (Barsade, Brief, & Spataro, 2003). Organizational psychologists have provided comprehensive definitions of constructs based on the psychology of affective sciences (e.g. Gray & Watson, 2001; Kelly & Barsade, 2001; Weiss & Cropanzano,
Functionality, Intentionality and Morality Research on Emotion in Organizations, Volume 3, 31–53 Copyright r 2007 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1746-9791/doi:10.1016/S1746-9791(07)03002-7
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1996; Weiss, 2002). Across disciplines, a consensus seems to prevail that we are primarily dealing with three main constructs: affect, mood, and emotion. These three constructs represent distinct, but related phenomena (Ekman & Davidson, 1994). However, as researchers, we must clarify these distinctions in our theory and our designs. We are facing two main challenges: (1) both theoretically and empirically, researchers often continue to use these three constructs interchangeably; and (2) the instruments may not allow any discrimination in type of affect. The immediate consequence of these two challenges is that we may lose some important information and it may hinder the application of knowledge on affective constructs. Part of the ‘‘emotion’’ challenge is that despite the fact that we are witnessing a significant increase of the research space occupied by ‘‘emotion’’-based studies, we are still lacking sufficient empirical evidence pertaining to discrete emotions (Brief & Weiss, 2002; Kelly & Barsade, 2001). Thus, while developing these two challenges, I will provide several examples and propose to the extent possible how discrete emotions could have been used and/or operationalized instead of mood or affect. In addition, I take the opportunity to present functions of various discrete emotions, so that the distinctions mentioned earlier can be better accounted for in future operationalizations.
CHALLENGE NUMBER 1: CONFOUNDING The following definitions seem generally accepted, even if the issue of defining is still enduring (Forgas, 1995; Scherer, 2005). Affect is a term that can refer to (a) feelings implying pleasantness or unpleasantness in a broad sense (Frijda, 1994), (b) a personality trait dimension (Diener, Smith, & Fujita, 1995; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988), or (c) an attitude (Scherer, 2005). Affect is also used as a general term that includes mood and emotion. Mood is a diffuse affective state, low in intensity, relatively long-lasting, often without any particular object or focus and even with an unknown antecedent source (Forgas, 1991; Frijda, 1994; Izard, 1991; also see Ekman, 1994). The argument in favor of mood rather than emotion provided by organizational psychologists is that it is more representative of daily commonplace feelings, less intense, and of a longer duration than emotion, therefore easier to measure (Kelly & Barsade, 2001). Emotion is episodic, which conveys the idea of a dynamic process, with a beginning and an end, and of a relatively brief duration (see Ekman & Davidson, 1994; Frijda, 1994). Emotion is
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event/object specific (Lazarus, 1991), usually has a definite cause and cognitive content (Forgas, 1991), therefore its implications on behavior are focused and specific (Frijda, 1986; Ketelaar & Clore, 1998). In the framework of the componential theories of emotion (Frijda, 1987; Lazarus, 1991; Roseman, 1984; Scherer, 1984, 2001; Smith & Ellsworth, 1985), emotion is a complex phenomenon involving different subsystems of the organism’s functioning – cognitive, physiological, action tendencies, motor expression, and subjective feeling, also referred to as the component process model of emotion (Scherer, 2005). Although researchers do carefully distinguish between these three constructs (e.g. Forgas & George, 2001; Kelly & Barsade, 2001), the terms are still used interchangeably, both theoretically and empirically (Briner & Kiefer, 2005). Some researchers introduce emotion as being the focus of their study, yet they operationalize it as affect (e.g. Lewis, 2000). Some researchers target mood, yet they may actually measure a mix of mood and emotion (e.g. Bartel & Saavedra, 2000; Forgas, 1989; Totterdell, Kellett, Teuchmann, & Briner, 1998). In this chapter, I will develop selected examples from the following two research domains: (1) group affect1 and (2) affect and decision-making.
Group Affect Hatfield, Cacioppo, and Rapson (1992, 1994) defined emotional contagion as the tendency to ‘‘catch’’ another person’s emotion, emotion being defined as a ‘‘package’’ including many components such as cognitive appraisal, physiological processes, action tendencies, subjective feelings, and instrumental behaviors. Hatfield et al. (1992) posited: ‘‘an important consequence of emotional contagion is an attentional, emotional, and behavioral synchrony that has the same adaptive utility (and drawbacks) for social entities (dyads, groups) as has emotion for the individual.’’ (p. 153). Hatfield et al. distinguished ‘‘primitive’’ emotional contagion as being the unconscious and automatic tendency to mimic and synchronize other’s non-verbal behaviors (facial, vocal, and postural), thus emotionally converging with others. Following that line of research, Barsade (2002) studied ‘‘emotional’’ contagion in groups and its influence on work group dynamics, i.e. cooperativeness, degree of group conflict, and individual satisfaction with performance. She proposed that mood contagion is influenced by two factors: the valence (positive or negative orientation) of the ‘‘emotion’’, and the energy with which this ‘‘emotion’’ is expressed. She argues that mood
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contagion is a reasonable first step to address the phenomenon of group emotional contagion. Mood contagion was measured with (a) self-report measures of mood, based on adjectives from Larsen and Diener’s (1992) circumplex model of emotion; and (b) the observation of facial expressions, body language, and verbal tone via videotapes recording group interactions, using the same observation coding scheme as Bartel and Saavedra (2000). Bartel and Saavedra (2000) examined collective moods, drawing on both Schachter’s (1959) emotional evaluation model (that they name ‘‘emotional comparison’’, based on the fact that social comparison processes are applied to emotion), and Hatfield et al.’s (1994) definition of emotional contagion to explain mood convergence. Bartel and Saavedra defined collective moods as moods shared by members of a group. Their objective was to demonstrate mood convergence (with self-report measures), and that moods in work groups are detectable by external observers. A team of observers was trained to code non-verbal behaviors (facial, vocal, and postural). To do so, they developed an Observer’s Guide to Work Group Mood based on Larsen and Diener’s (1992) circumplex model of emotion. Bartel and Saavedra did find mood convergence in work groups, and observers were able to detect different types of moods. Moods characterized by higher arousal were more accurately assessed. Even though these two studies are impressive and represent important progress in researching collective affect, they also typify the challenges at hand: (1) a conceptual challenge and (2) a measurement challenge. The second challenge will be addressed in the next section. Conceptually, facial, vocal, and behavioral cues represent typical indicators of emotion, as extensively validated in the emotion literature (Harrigan, Rosenthal, & Scherer, 2005). Hatfield et al.’s (1994) original definition of emotional contagion includes facial, vocal, and behavioral cues as cues of emotion. Further, as Ekman (1994) has shown in his work, mood does not have a distinctive facial expression, but emotion does. Thus, the probabilities are larger that an observer will see the display of the emotional cues rather than the display of a mood. One could speculate that the reason why Bartel and Saavedra found that moods with higher arousal were more accurately assessed is in the form of a question: where is the frontier between an emotion and a high-arousal mood? Moreover, emotions are object/event focused (Lazarus, 1991) and are brought into play by the actions of others, hence influencing and being influenced by the course of interpersonal relationships (Frijda & Mesquita, 1994; Parkinson, Fischer, & Manstead, 2005). Thus, in a work group context, where a large number of interactions and different dynamics take
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place, there is a greater probability that emotions are felt and displayed, rather than moods, which are by definition not so easily displayed, if at all. Totterdell et al. (1998) have also studied collective affect under the label of mood, namely mood linkage. The authors defined mood linkage as interpersonal mood influences that operate within work teams over time, as team members work together and share life events. Their moods will become linked together and temporally synchronized. Totterdell et al. explain that for mood linkage to occur, two processes are necessary: not only shared life events, to which team members will respond similarly, but also interpersonal mood influences, which are the result of verbal and non-verbal, and conscious and non-conscious interactions between team members. Totterdell et al. were interested to find out whether the strength of association between individual mood and the moods of teammates depends on the individual’s commitment to the team and his/her perception of the team climate. They also posited that an individual whose mood is not synchronized will experience more trouble with his/her teammates, and that the level of synchronization is inversely related to the amount of daily hassles2 an individual may experience with his/her team. Finally, they wanted to investigate the role of conscious processes in mood linkage. They used both daily measurements (i.e. diary methodology) and the experience sampling methodology (ESM) (Stone, Shiffman, & DeVries, 1999), which was designed to measure moods and emotions at some precise moments in time. In the first study, Totterdell et al. found a synchronization between individual moods and the collective moods of their teammates, in other words, the individuals’ moods were more related to the moods of their teammates than to the moods of individuals belonging to other teams. The positive correlation between individuals’ moods and teammates’ moods occurred regardless of the number of shared daily hassles, and were even greater in case of older individuals who were more committed to the team, perceived a better team climate, and experienced fewer hassles with teammates. In the second study, Totterdell et al. were able to conclude that it is possible for people to consciously process information about other people’s moods and make a reasonable judgment about them. Conscious processes may explain interpersonal mood influence within teams in this case. A similar argument about the possible role of discrete emotions can be proposed regarding Totterdell et al.’s study. Emotions may occur based on certain moods operating in the background (Davidson, 1994), and moods have behavioral implications (Scherer, 2005). But again, in a team, there is a higher probability of emotions being triggered than fleeting moods with a diffuse source. For example, in Totterdell et al.’s study, nurses were
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working in teams, sharing life events with the possibility of having their individual appraisals shaped by their common fate, thus leading to similar emotions in reaction to the events and the relationships. In sum, the question here is not to ignore the important step forward that has been accomplished in Totterdell and his colleagues’ work but to think how in the future, we can replicate this type of study in integrating emotion, because it is highly probable that emotions are triggered in these collective contexts.
Affect and Decision-Making The literature on affect/mood and decision-making also provides several opportunities to clarify adopted definitions. Isen and her colleagues have focused their research efforts on mild positive affect, defined as common positive feelings of happiness, well-being, good fortune, or enjoyment, induced by everyday events such as when one finds a coin in a public telephone, or when being offered refreshments, cookies, or candies (Isen & Baron, 1991). A large number of studies on affect and decision-making or information processing have used a mood manipulation technique such as showing happy movies or sad movies (e.g. Ambady & Gray, 2002; Isen, Daubman, & Nowicki, 1987; Kaufmann & Vosburg, 2002); have used the intervention of a confederate, for example, giving positive or negative feedback to subjects (Forgas, 1989); or have subjects perform embarrassing charades, such as acting like a dog or a slave (Keating et al., 2005). From what we know about emotion and appraisal processes, it is highly likely that emotions were triggered at the moment, not mood. Examples can also be found in the strategic decision-making literature. Amason (1996) operationalized affective conflict as anger, asking participants in the study ‘‘how angry they felt’’. Theoretically, it would have been useful to integrate emotion theory into the notion of affective conflict, which is a larger concept. Schweiger and colleagues (Schweiger, Sandberg, & Ragan, 1986; Schweiger, Sandberg, & Rechner, 1989) or Priem and Price (1991) recognize that affective conflict or cognitive conflict can lead participants to feel angry or depressed, to be treated unfairly or rejected. Again, this type of research could benefit from integrating knowledge on emotion and appraisal processes, as it would provide a richer picture. Fig. 1 represents an attempt to describe the affective landscape. Affective disposition constitutes the overall background against which moods and
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Affect, Mood, and Emotion in Organizational Research Graphical proposition of the interaction between affect, mood, emotion, intensity and time
Affective disposition
Intensity
Emotion episode 1
Emotion episode 2
Mood 1 Mood 2
Time
Fig. 1.
Graphical Proposition of the Interaction between Affect, Mood, Emotion, Intensity, and Time.
emotions are intertwined. An emotion may be elicited, after which there is a decay effect. When the exact reason that triggered this emotion fades out, it may still leave the individual with the aftermath of it, and the remainder may contribute to a mood. Alternatively, the mood is present as a background feeling, providing the proper terrain for a corresponding emotion to emerge. Researchers are not always explicit about this complex relationship. Even though it is understood that one has to partial out the different components depending on the purpose of the study, research may gain from this kind of clarification. It could prevent confusion about the processes, the measurements, and the outcomes. In sum, the accumulated knowledge on discrete emotions may be larger than it appears. Brief and Weiss (2002) have commented on the narrowness of affect research in organizations. This narrowness translates into problems and methods. Studies have been focused mainly on affect and mood, consequently with a lack of studies on discrete emotions. Given the confusion still prevalent in operationalizations, it is unclear how many studies focusing on affect of mood actually uncover findings on discrete emotions.
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CHALLENGE NUMBER 2: MEASURING Underneath the overall challenge of measuring, we find ourselves confronted with a series of subchallenges: (1) the nature of available instruments, (2) the issue of self-report, and (3) the issue of feasibility. First, instruments are confusing to start with. How do we distinguish between the constructs if in appearance they are measured with the same terms? What is the difference between: (1) happy as an affective trait as in Tellegen’s Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ; 1984)? (2) Happy as a temporary mood, as in Larsen and Diener’s circumplex (1992)? (3) Happy as an emotion in Izard’s Differential Emotion Scale (DES; 1991) or in the Job Emotion Scale (JWS; Fisher, 2000)? The answer lies in the theoretical development and methodological design. It is important to note that instruments may already introduce ambiguity to begin with. To return to the Larsen and Diener’s circumplex (1992) example, used by Bartel and Saavedra (2000) and by Barsade (2002), the title announces ‘‘Promises and problems with the circumplex model of emotion’’. If one were to rely on the title only, one could question the reason why this instrument is used to measure mood. Fortunately, the paper actually presents an instrument to measure mood, while also addressing affect and emotion (which is normal to a certain extent, given the fact these three constructs are related). Unfortunately, it is unclear whether the three constructs have been distinguished or not. Second, affect, mood, and emotions are measured in organizational psychology with self-report measures. Critiques of the self-report method have been reviewed by emotion researchers (Ellsworth & Scherer, 2003), evoking namely the bias of social desirability, the difficulty for participants to access their own internal cognitive process to describe their feelings, and the nature of the instrument itself. In other words, we may still be limited by the degree of awareness people have of their feelings. Returning to the example above, when asking participants to rate themselves on a happiness scale, and if there are no supplementary questions verifying the nature of the self-report, the researcher may not capture the true nature of the individual’s feeling. In his studies on well-being, Kahneman (1999) has also demonstrated that individuals proceed differently when they recall an affective event. When asked ‘‘How did you feel over the past week?’’, participants may remember their average feeling, their peak experience feeling, or their latest feeling (i.e. primacy vs. recency effect). In sum, we may need to interview participants more systematically, even though this might be very time consuming, and not always possible.
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Third, these questions lead to the challenge of feasibility. As indicated before, it might not be possible to conduct post-hoc interviews with participants, and it might not be desirable in the case where participants should not focus too much on their feelings but on the task that was required with their feeling as a subtle background. As far as emotions are concerned, Kelly and Barsade (2001) have pointed out that the study of discrete emotions in organizations, and namely of intense emotions, is constrained by the very fact organizations will impose limits and barriers. While experimental studies in laboratories may have more margin of maneuver, field studies are limited in terms of access to participants and the type of questions that can be asked. In addition, emotions should ideally be measured comprehensively in order to integrate all the components of emotion, i.e. appraisal processes at the central nervous system level, response patterns at the autonomic and somatic nervous systems level, action tendencies, patterns of facial, vocal, and bodily movements, and the nature of the subjective feeling state reflecting the change in all of these components (Scherer, 2005). Emotion researchers themselves have not been able to achieve this; thus, the scenario is almost impossible to consider in organizational settings. However, the good news is that there is no other access to a person’s subjective feeling reflecting all the mental and bodily changes while being confronted with a specific event, than to ask this individual to report their experience (Scherer, 2005). Thus, self-report remains the central method to access the affective information. Behavior is also one of the main outcomes of emotion. Gaining a better understanding of antecedents and behavioral implications of emotion could be very fruitful in the study of discrete emotions in organizational settings.
FUNCTIONS OF EMOTIONS There is an increasing number of studies taking emotion into consideration, but as reviews of research on affect point out, there is still not enough (Kelly & Barsade, 2001; Brief & Weiss, 2002). In this section, I will describe a categorization of emotions and their corresponding appraisals, function, and behavioral implications that could serve as a reference grid to the researcher trying to incorporate emotion in the research design. Scherer (1984, 1994) posits that each of these appraisals leads to a different emotional response, which could lead in theory to an infinite number of emotions. However, Scherer, in convergence with other appraisal
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theorists, acknowledges the existence of emotion families or prototypes. He proposes the term of ‘‘modal’’ emotions, defined as the outcomes of frequently occurring patterns of appraisal or else, prototypical patterns of appraisal (Scherer, 1994, 2005). Based on the concept of class of emotions initially proposed by Scherer and Tran (2001), I have developed four classes grouping a representative sample of modal emotions: achievement emotions, approach emotions, resignation emotion, and antagonistic emotions (Tran, 2004).
Achievement Emotions Achievement emotions include emotions such as pride, elation, joy, and satisfaction (see Table 1). Achievement emotions occur in situations when people have a sense of accomplishment, personally or professionally, and a desire to celebrate successes with others (Izard, 1991; Lazarus, 1991; Scherer & Tran, 2001). These are positive emotions, enhancing self-esteem and well-being: pride is associated with the enhancement of ego-identity (Lazarus, 1991) and self-esteem (Zammuner, 1996); elation gives one the feeling of living fully (Izard, 1991); joy makes one feel confident, comfortable, and boosts self-esteem (Frijda, 1987; Izard, 1991); and satisfaction is conducive to a feeling of fulfillment and well-being (Izard, 1991; Lazarus, 1991). The behaviors associated with pride, elation, and joy are being exuberant, expansive, and excited (Frijda, Kuipers, & Schure, 1989; Izard, 1991; Lazarus, 1991). Satisfaction is associated with serenity, relaxation, and openness (Frijda et al., 1989; Izard, 1991). Achievement emotions occur at both the individual and the collective level: when feeling pride, one endorses the credit for the achievement; but pride can also be felt collectively and the whole group’s identity becomes heightened (Lazarus, 1991); joy and satisfaction give a sense of accomplishment when a job is well done, or when a new task or an intellectual challenge has arisen, giving oneself or the group a sense of worth and competence (Izard, 1991). Elation and joy are important emotions that strengthen bonds between people: one is more open, receptive and participative (Frijda, 1986), caring for others, which leads to solidarity with others (Kemper, 1991), and is more amenable to celebrate with others (Rivera, 1984). Achievement emotions may also have negative implications. They could imply overestimation of personal merit and encourage stagnation or complacency (Scherer & Tran, 2001). When displaying pride, one can trigger
Class
Achievement emotions
a
Emotions
Summary of Definitional Elements for Achievement Emotions. Appraisal and Definition
Behaviors
Exuberance, expansiveness Bragging, assertiveness Exuberance, impulsivity, excessiveness
Pride
Positive, high control Sense of power
Elation
Positive, high control Stimulated
Joy
Positive, high control Sense of accomplishment
Excitement Free activation, creativity Wanting to be with others
Satisfaction
Positive, high control Sense of accomplishment
Openness, smiling
Positive Aspectsa
Negative Aspectsa
Enhances ego/group identity (I/G)
Complacency (I/G) Arrogance (I/G)
Gives the impression of living fully (I) Display of attention to others and participation (I/G) Being generous, patient, tolerant, supporting (I/G) Enhances creativity and confidence (I/G) Wanting to celebrate with others (G) Marks the celebration of success (I/G) Enhances sense of fulfillment and wellbeing (I)
Risk to engage in boastful course of actions (I/G)
Slowing down of productive thinking, lack of analysis (I/G) Low concentration (I)
Affect, Mood, and Emotion in Organizational Research
Table 1.
Stagnation, complacency (I/G)
I indicates the implications for the individual and G indicates the implications for a group.
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envy or hostility in others (Lazarus, 1991; Zammuner, 1996), which could lead to counter-productive conflicts. Elation can lead to a boastful course of actions, which could be damaging for the individual or for the group (Janis, 1982). Although joy encourages creativity and intuition, it can also slow down performance and decrease productive thinking (Izard, 1991). Satisfaction may prevent the individual or the group to make the effort to explore new alternatives (Scherer & Tran, 2001).
Approach Emotions Approach emotions include emotions such as relief, hope, interest, and surprise (see Table 2). Approach emotions encourage exploration, development, and moving forward: relief occurs after a negative emotion, but something has changed for the better, distress diminishes (Lazarus, 1991) and one is encouraged to move on to other activities; hope contains some uncertainty (Roseman, Antoniou, & Jose, 1996; Smith & Ellsworth, 1985) but is a future-oriented emotion (Frijda et al., 1989; Rivera, 1984) and plays an adaptive role to pursue one’s goals (Ketelaar & Clore, 1998); interest is the emotion triggered when one feels engagement, fascination, and curiosity (Izard, 1991), it is typically associated with creative activities, with the development of skills and intelligence, the acquisition of new competencies, and persistence in effort (Izard, 1991); and surprise, also accompanied by uncertainty, keeps one alert and stimulated to cope with new and sudden events (Izard, 1991). The behaviors and/or action tendencies associated with hope and interest are being vigilant, mobilized, committed (Lazarus, 1991), attending, effortful, energetic, motivated, and involved (Ellsworth & Smith, 1988; Frijda, 1987; Izard, 1991; Smith & Ellsworth, 1985). When feeling relief, one is rather relaxed, showing signs of decompression (Lazarus, 1991), thus enabling the organism to regain energy for new events. When surprise is felt, there is little physical effort (Smith & Ellsworth, 1985) but it leads to a clearing of the mind, while gaining information (Roseman, 1984) and orienting oneself to the unexpected event causing surprise (Ellsworth & Smith, 1988). In an organizational context, team members feeling relief after a task is finally accomplished or a reward has been granted, for example, would feel re-energized before moving to the next task. Hope and interest sustain the vigilance and the mobilization groups need to move forward. Paez, Asun, and Gonzalez (1995) describe hope, in the context of Pinochet’s dictatorship
Class
Approach emotions
a
Emotions
Summary of Definitional Elements for Approach Emotions.
Appraisal and Definition
Behaviors
Relief
Positive, low control
Relaxation, decompression
Hope
Positive, low control Uncertainty Future-oriented
Vigilant, mobilized, committed Ready to expand effort if necessary
Interest
Positive, low control Engaged
Approaching, exploring Energetic, excited Learning
Surprise
Positive, low control Uncertainty Transient emotion
Orienting oneself Attending
Positive Aspectsa
Negative Aspectsa
Enables the removal of distress (I) Re-energize before moving to the next project (I/G) Sustains group activity (G) Motivates to move forward (I/G) Enhances vigilance (I/G) Enhances creativity, curiosity (I/G) Acquiring new skills, competencies (I/G) Persisting in tasks, even tedious ones (I/G) Helps to deal effectively with new and sudden event (I)
Withdrawal (I/G) Lack of energy (I/G)
Pursuing unrealistic goals (I/G)
Dispersion of energy and attention (I/G) Being too narrowly focusing on items to the detriment of others (I/G) If leading to fear, risk of panic (I/G)
Affect, Mood, and Emotion in Organizational Research
Table 2.
I indicates the implications for the individual and G indicates the implications for a group.
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44
in Chile, as a powerful social tool to make a group keep faith and stay committed to their actions. Interest reinforces links between people, and as Izard (1991) explains, it is ‘‘a vehicle for the formation and maintenance of social units.’’ (pp. 109–110). Approach emotions can also have negative implications. Relief, if prolonged, can lead to withdrawal; hope can lead to unrealistic goals and inappropriate actions; interest, if too narrowly focused, can lead to unrealistic plans, scattered attention, blindness, or dispersion of energy and attention (Scherer & Tran, 2001); and surprise can lead to ‘‘freezing’’ of behavior (Roseman, 1984).
Resignation Emotions Resignation emotions include emotions such as sadness, fear, shame, and guilt (see Table 3). Resignation emotions lead to reduced activities and efforts, little innovation, and internal focus. Sadness is felt when something is lost in one’s life, a dear one (Lazarus, 1991), a job, a reputation, or social status (Kemper, 1991), and is typically associated with resignation and sense of failure; fear triggers a sense of threat (Oatley & Duncan, 1994), of uncontrollability (Frijda, 1987), and a desire to preserve integrity (Paez et al., 1995); shame is felt when a negative evaluation of the global self is involved (Lewis, 1993; Tangney, 1999): one feels humiliated and worthless in the eyes of the self and others (Niedenthal, Tangney, & Gavanski, 1994), causing a temporary inability to think logically and efficiently (Izard, 1991); and guilt, which also involves negative self-evaluation but related to specific actions and behaviors (Baumeister, Stillwell, & Heartherton, 1994; Lewis, 1993), makes one feel remorse and regret with recurrent thoughts about wrongdoing (Tangney, 1999). The behaviors and/or action tendencies associated with fear are avoidance and escape (Frijda, 1987; Ketelaar & Clore, 1998; Lazarus, 1991). Fear narrows thoughts, which can limit the number of alternative options for action (Izard, 1991), but can also serve as a signal function for obtaining relevant information from the environment (Paez et al., 1995). Behaviors associated with sadness are withdrawal, apathy, and appeal for support (Frijda et al., 1989; Lazarus, 1991), which help the organism to save energy, in order to adjust to new conditions (Kemper, 1991). When feeling shame, one wants to hide (Frijda, 1987; Tangney, Miller, Flicker, & Barlow, 1996); one is either unable to speak and is confused (Lewis, 1993) or, on the contrary, one has a rapid, repetitive, even obsessive speech (Scheff, 1990).
Class
Resignation emotions
a
Emotions
Summary of Definitional Elements for Resignation Emotions. Appraisal and Definition
Behaviors
Sadness
Negative, low control Loss
Withdrawal Resignation, powerlessness
Fear
Negative, low control Threat, uncertainty
Avoidance, escape Protect oneself
Shame
Negative, low control Humiliated, feeling incompetent
Hide or wanting to hide Shrinking of the body
Guilt
Negative, low control Done something morally reprehensible
Thinking Confessions, apologies, reparative actions
Positive Aspectsa
Possibility to adjust to new events, review objectives realistically (I/G) Reinforces social bonds and support (G) Reunification of group or country (G) Restrain aggressive behavior (I/G) Think carefully about risks (I/G) Enhances conformity and individual/ social responsibility (I/G) Improvement of self (I) Encourages reconciliation and empathy (G) Enhances compliance with group norms
Sense of failure, like nothing can be done (I/G)
Triggers tunnel vision (I/G) Freezing /I/G)
Speech disruption (I) Obsessive speech (I) Painful (I)
Feeling isolated (I) Rumination (I)
45
I indicates the implications for the individual and G indicates the implications for a group.
Negative Aspectsa
Affect, Mood, and Emotion in Organizational Research
Table 3.
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The main behavior characteristic of guilt is reparative action (Lewis, 1993; Tangney, 1999). Resignation emotions strengthen the bonds between the members of a group: sadness leads to protective behavior and reinforces social cohesion (Paez et al., 1995); fear restrains aggressive behavior (Ketelaar & Clore, 1998) and reunites the members of a group as well (Paez et al., 1995); shame encourages prosocial behavior (Lazarus, 1991) and acts as a force of social cohesion too, enhancing conformity and individual responsibility (Izard, 1991); guilt increases compliance (Carlsmith & Gross, 1969) and reinforces social bonds, with a sense for interpersonal obligation (Baumeister et al., 1994) and empathy (Niedenthal et al., 1994). Resignation emotions have other positive implications. They provide recuperation time, where one can readapt to new conditions, and prevent one from embarking on ventures that are too risky (Scherer & Tran, 2001). Sadness slows the pace down, and one is led to replace unattainable goals by attainable ones (Levine, 1996). Fear makes one think more carefully about risks, thus it is an adaptive emotion (Izard, 1991). Fear also has a useful signaling function, which enables the organism to get information from the environment (Paez et al., 1995). Shame leads to self-improvement in order to avoid the sense of incompetence brought by the shame experience (Izard, 1991), it helps restore one’s ideal and identity (Rivera, 1984). Finally, guilt prevents one from acting destructively against others (Kemper, 1991).
Antagonistic Emotions Antagonistic emotions include emotions such as envy, disgust, contempt, and anger (see Table 4). Disgust, contempt, and anger have been described by Izard (1991) as the hostility triad, that is, there is an observable pattern that these three emotions often occur together, even if each one retains its own characteristics. Common characteristics include: they are negative, with an appraisal of high control over events and their consequences (Scherer, 1984). Antagonistic emotions enhance aggressiveness, which could nurture a blind desire for retaliation and potential fighting (Scherer & Tran, 2001). Envy is felt when one wants what someone else has (Lazarus, 1991) and one feels inferior (Parrott & Smith, 1993). In an organizational context, envy is generated by gains or promotions obtained by colleagues (Lazarus & Cohen-Charash, 2001). If associated with anger, envy includes potential attack, and if felt for a long period of time, it can poison all relationships (Lazarus, 1991), with family, friends, or colleagues at work. Disgust (i.e. moral disgust as opposed to physical disgust) is felt when one is facing
Class
Antagonistic emotions
Emotions
Positive Aspectsa
Appraisal and Definition
Behaviors
Envy
Negative, high control Sense of inferiority
Mobilization Yearning With anger, potential attack
Effort towards emulation to improve self or team (I/G)
Disgust
Negative, high control Repulsion Hostility triad Negative, high control Hostility triad Negative, high control Hostility triad Sense of unfairness
Rejection With anger, potential attack Indirect aggression Despise Attack Verbal or symbolic aggression Passive aggressive
Signals ‘‘poisonous’’ others (G)
Contempt Anger
a
Summary of Definitional Elements for Antagonistic Emotions.
Maintains group conformity (G) Improves selfconfidence (I/G) Helps reinforcing team values (G)
Negative Aspectsa
If prolonged, could poison relationships, with friends or colleagues (G) Risk of being rejected by the group (G) Prejudicing other groups (G) In case of attack, one can get punished, socially disapproved or undergo retaliation (I/G)
Affect, Mood, and Emotion in Organizational Research
Table 4.
I indicates the implications for the individual and G indicates the implications for a group.
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something considered repulsive (Smith & Ellsworth, 1985). If combined with anger, disgust with oneself or with members of the group can provide motivation for attack or destruction (Izard, 1991). Contempt is referred to as the ‘‘cool’’ emotion of the hostility triad: one feels superior and triumphant, but rather than attacking, one may use other indirect strategies such as outcasting or humiliation (Rivera, 1984; Izard, 1991). Anger is the emotion triggered when one feels something wrong has been done, by oneself or by others, that could be considered as an offense (Lazarus, 1991), with a feeling of injustice or unfairness (Scherer, 1984; Smith & Ellsworth, 1985). There is a belief that one has control over the situation (Lazarus, 1991), and can do something to restore one’s threatened goals (Levine, 1996). The behaviors and/or action tendencies associated with anger are antagonistic: one is ready to strike out or attack (Frijda et al., 1989; Kemper, 1991; Lazarus, 1991; Levine, 1996). However, anger is often inhibited for social reasons, as physical aggression incurs social disapproval or even punishment (Lazarus, 1991). Thus, it may be replaced by verbal or symbolic aggression (e.g. the denial or removal of some benefit held by the anger instigator), by being very calm to compensate (Averill, 1983), or by passive aggressive behaviors (e.g. counter-implementing an order given by the boss or playing sick (Lazarus, 1991)). Antagonistic emotions can also have positive implications. They can help group members to gain confidence and the right amount of energy to achieve their goals together, and to eventually counter-attack (the enemy, competition) with the objective of winning. Envy can lead to emulation of a positive accomplishment in order to get admiration from peers (Lazarus, 1991); disgust can serve as a signal for the individual or the group to change their attitude or behavior, or to risk rejection if they do not, as for example maintaining a lower level of pollution (Izard, 1991); contempt also contributes to maintaining social norms by putting pressure on deviant individuals (Izard, 1991); and finally, a little anger increases self-confidence in certain situations (Izard, 1991), which is necessary to react to aggression or attack from others. The group may gain cohesiveness as anger can reinforce group values (Rivera, 1984).
CONCLUDING COMMENTS Despite the significant amount of research conducted on affective phenomena, there is still room for improvement, as expressed by emotion researchers themselves. Scherer (2005) calls for the imperative need to generate
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a ‘‘minimal consensus about the defining features of the different types of affective phenomena’’ (p. 697), especially as we are increasingly addressing them from an interdisciplinary fashion. Selected organizational researchers who specialized deeper in affective research make the effort to incorporate the latest thinking in the field, but the vast majority of organizational researchers borrow definitions that serve the purpose of their studies’ design. Thus, the responsibility of providing better definitions lies with affective researchers, reviewers, and editors. The body of knowledge on emotion is now large enough and should be better exploited. Failure to do so might perpetuate confusion about definitions, results, and implications. The cumulative learning (generalizations and replications) about affective phenomena can only benefit if we carefully separate constructs.
NOTES 1. In order to be consistent with the definitions I provide in this chapter, I will use the term ‘affect’ as a general term including mood and emotion. I will otherwise specify in cases where I use the term for another purpose. 2. Totterdell et al. operationalized shared life events as sharing negative events, i.e. daily hassles, and not sharing positive life events.
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CHAPTER 3 INVESTIGATING THE EMOTIONAL BASIS OF CHARISMATIC LEADERSHIP: THE ROLE OF LEADERS’ POSITIVE MOOD AND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE Frank Walter and Heike Bruch ABSTRACT The relevance of affective factors in the charismatic leadership process has been widely acknowledged in leadership research. Building on this notion, the present study empirically investigated the role of leaders’ positive mood and emotional intelligence in the development of charismatic leadership behaviors. We developed hypotheses linking these constructs and tested them in a sample of 34 leaders and their 165 direct followers from a multinational corporation. Results showed that both leaders’ positive mood and leaders’ emotional intelligence were positively related to their charismatic leadership behaviors, as rated by followers. Further, we found leaders’ emotional intelligence to moderate the relationship between leaders’ positive mood and their charismatic leadership behaviors. Emotionally intelligent leaders exhibited charismatic leadership behaviors to a high extent, largely irrespective of their degree of positive mood. In contrast, leaders low on emotional intelligence were Functionality, Intentionality and Morality Research on Emotion in Organizations, Volume 3, 55–85 Copyright r 2007 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1746-9791/doi:10.1016/S1746-9791(07)03003-9
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FRANK WALTER AND HEIKE BRUCH
more likely to exhibit charismatic behaviors when their positive mood was high, while they were less likely to exhibit such behaviors when their positive mood was low. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for leadership theory, research, and practice. Research on charismatic leadership has accumulated an impressive amount of empirical evidence demonstrating the effectiveness and the beneficial outcomes of this leadership style (e.g., Lowe, Kroeck, & Sivasubramaniam, 1996; Shamir, Zakay, Breinin, & Popper, 1998; Waldman, Javidan, & Varella, 2004; Waldman, Ramı´ rez, House, & Puranam, 2001). Nevertheless, the antecedents and prerequisites of charismatic leadership have often been neglected (Brown & Moshavi, 2005; Conger, 1999; Yukl, 1999). Hence, there is little empirical evidence guiding organizations in their efforts to develop charismatic leaders (Barbuto & Burbach, 2006; Bommer, Rubin, & Baldwin, 2004). This is not to say that there has been a complete lack of antecedent-oriented thinking in charismatic leadership research. Scholars have addressed various potential prerequisites of such leadership behaviors, including macro-contextual factors (e.g., Pillai & Meindl, 1998; Shamir & Howell, 1999), leader personality traits (e.g., Bono & Judge, 2004; House & Howell, 1992), and leader attitudes (e.g., Bommer et al., 2004). These advances in antecedent-oriented charismatic leadership research notwithstanding, important limitations remain with regard to this line of inquiry. Charismatic leadership has been suggested to represent an inherently emotional process (Ashkanasy & Tse, 2000; Wasiliewski, 1985). For instance, charismatic leaders may arouse their followers emotionally and harness followers’ feelings to the pursuit of collective goals (e.g., Ashforth & Humphrey, 1995; Avolio & Bass, 1988; Howell & Frost, 1989; McColl-Kennedy & Anderson, 2002; Pirola-Merlo, Ha¨rtel, Mann, & Hirst, 2002; Shamir, House, & Arthur, 1993). Charismatic leaders have been shown to express positive emotions in written vision statements and planned speeches (Bono & Ilies, 2006) and to exhibit personalities characterized by high levels of trait positive affectivity (Rubin, Munz, & Bommer, 2005). Scholars have theorized charismatic leaders to exhibit a ‘‘positive cognitive schema’’ (Ashkanasy & Tse, 2000, p. 227) and to hold positive, optimistic attitudes towards their work environment (Spreitzer & Quinn, 1996). Finally, leaders’ emotional intelligence has been suggested and shown to play a key role in the emergence of charismatic leadership behaviors (e.g., Middleton, 2005; Prati, Douglas, Ferris, Ammeter, & Buckley, 2003; Sosik & Megerian, 1999). Surprisingly, however, empirical research has largely disregarded leaders’ actual moods and emotions in charismatic leadership emergence and has not examined the potential interplay of
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leaders’ affect and emotional intelligence in predicting charismatic leadership behaviors to date (cf. George, 2000; Kellet, Humphrey, & Sleeth, 2002). Investigating these relationships might constitute an important step towards the explanation of charismatic leadership emergence. The present research empirically investigates the extent to which leaders’ positive mood and emotional intelligence (and the interplay of these affective constructs) may be useful for the development of charismatic leadership behaviors in organizations. It intends to broaden extant knowledge about the antecedents of charismatic leadership, and to contribute to leadership theory and research in various ways. First, by empirically considering leaders’ positive mood as an antecedent of charismatic leadership, we extend prior approaches to the emergence of this leadership style. To our knowledge, this research constitutes the first empirical study to investigate the connection between leaders’ positive mood and their charismatic leadership behaviors. Second, we aim at corroborating and extending prior research findings on the role of leaders’ emotional intelligence as an antecedent of charismatic leadership. Even though current empirical studies have demonstrated a positive relationship between these constructs (e.g., Barling, Slater, & Kelloway, 2000; Middleton, 2005), the research area of emotional intelligence is still in an early stage of development (Daus & Ashkanasy, 2005). Hence, we aim at constructively replicating prior findings using a measure of emotional intelligence that has not been employed in the context of charismatic leadership emergence so far, namely the scale developed by Wong and Law (2002). As Eden (2002) argued, such constructive replication may add to extant research knowledge by strengthening confidence in the validity and the robustness of the respective results. Finally, Brown and Moshavi (2005) recently called for research to investigate moderating relationships involving emotional intelligence and charismatic or transformational leadership. They argued that such investigations could advance both leadership and emotional intelligence research. Following this call, we examine a potential moderating role of emotional intelligence in the relationship between leaders’ positive mood and their charismatic leadership behaviors.
HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT Leaders’ Positive Mood and Charismatic Leadership Moods (in contrast to acute emotions) have been defined as relatively subtle, diffuse, and enduring feeling states that are not directed towards any particular object, providing the affective context for day-to-day thought
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processes and behaviors (Forgas, 2002; George, 1989). Due to their frequent occurrence and their pervasive qualities in everyday life, such feeling states may be particularly relevant for predicting individuals’ cognitions and behaviors (Forgas, 2000; George & Brief, 1996). Positive and negative affect have been shown to constitute two largely independent dimensions and to be related to different classes of variables (Carver & Scheier, 1990; McIntyre, Watson, Clark, & Cross, 1991; Watson & Tellegen, 1985). Hence, in line with prior research (e.g., Bono & Ilies, 2006), we chose to focus on the impacts of positive mood on charismatic leadership while neglecting negative mood states. This approach seems viable, as leaders’ negative affectivity has been shown to be largely unrelated to their charismatic behaviors (Rubin et al., 2005). From a theoretical perspective, the Affect Infusion Model (Forgas, 1995) provides a useful starting point when considering the effects of individuals’ positive mood on their behavior in organizations in general and on their charismatic leadership behaviors in particular. As Forgas and George (2001) explained, affect infusion ‘‘refers to the process whereby affectively loaded information exerts an influence on, and becomes incorporated into, a person’s cognitive and behavioral processes, entering into their constructive deliberations and eventually coloring the outcome in a mood-congruent direction’’ (p. 9). Such affect infusion has been argued to be particularly relevant when individuals are faced with complex, novel, and demanding tasks, as the extensive processing required in such situations increases the chance that affectively primed information inadvertently enters individuals’ judgments and behavioral planning processes (Forgas, 1995, 2002). The Affect Infusion Model suggests that through this mechanism, individuals’ mood influences the content of their thinking, their cognitive processes, and their behavioral reactions (Forgas & George, 2001). Accordingly, positive mood has been demonstrated to focus people’s attention on positive information, signaling that ‘‘all is well with the world’’ (Forgas, 2000, p. 17) and evoking optimistic, confident, and assertive behaviors (Forgas, 2002; Mayer, Gaschke, Braverman, & Evans, 1992). Positively tempered individuals have been shown to perceive their environment in terms of opportunities and challenges (Blascovich & Mendes, 2000; Mittal & Ross, 1998), and to favorably evaluate their chances for future success (Forgas, 1998; Forgas, Bower, & Moylan, 1990). They demonstrate heightened task activity and persistence even in crisis situations (Folkman & Moskowitz, 2000; Fredrickson, Tugade, Waugh, & Larkin, 2003) and they are more willing and more likely to take risks (Isen & Patrick, 1983). In addition, positive mood has been shown to contribute to individuals’ creative,
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abstract, and idealized thinking (Isen, 1999; Madjar, Oldham, & Pratt, 2002), promoting an assimilative cognitive style which is directed towards exploring novelty (Fiedler, 2000; Forgas, 2000). Individuals in a positive mood perform better in creative problem-solving and divergent thinking tasks, and they are able to think in broader, more inclusive, and more abstract terms (Isen & Baron, 1991; Vosburg, 1998). Finally, positively tempered individuals are likely to adopt a more positive view towards others (Forgas & George, 2001). They have been shown to take more interest in others (Jones & George, 1998), to enjoy a higher frequency and quality of social interactions (Berry & Hansen, 1996; Watson, Clark, McIntyre, & Hamaker, 1992), and to behave in more helpful and prosocial manners (George & Brief, 1992; Spector & Fox, 2002). Building on this theoretical and empirical background, we argue that leaders in a positive mood are more likely to engage in charismatic leadership behaviors than those who are not in a positive mood. Charismatic leaders act as role models and gain their followers’ respect, trust, and identification (Shamir et al., 1993). They display a sense of power and confidence and make bold, unconventional, and counternormative decisions (Avolio & Bass, 1988; Conger & Kanungo, 1987). Also, charismatic leaders develop an intriguing vision of the future and present it towards their followers in an emotionally captivating manner (Awamleh & Gardner, 1999; Shamir et al., 1993). Such charismatic behaviors place high demands on the leader and are characterized by high levels of complexity and innovativeness. Thus, based on an affect infusion perspective (Forgas, 1995), leaders’ positive mood seems likely to influence their charismatic leadership behaviors. As the research reviewed above suggests, leaders’ positive mood should enable them to act in the bold, risky, and unconventional manner which characterizes charismatic leadership, and to display a sense of power and confidence towards followers even in difficult and critical situations (George & Bettenhausen, 1990). This is likely to strengthen leaders’ charismatic appeal and their suitability as role-models for followers (cf. Conger & Kanungo, 1987; Howell & Higgins, 1990). Positive mood should also strengthen leaders’ ability to develop an intriguing and challenging vision and to communicate this vision in an emotionally captivating manner. As Berson, Shamir, Avolio, and Popper (2001) argued, strong visions are characterized by high levels of optimism and confidence. They creatively describe the future in an idealized manner which goes well beyond the features of the organization’s status quo (Zaccaro & Banks, 2001). The emotionally captivating communication of such visions is based on the expression of positive mood (Awamleh & Gardner, 1999; Howell & Frost,
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1989). Hence, positive mood is likely to strengthen both the content and the delivery of a charismatic leaders’ visionary message. Finally, leaders’ positive mood should make it easier for them to gain subordinates’ trust and identification through its impacts on leaders’ helpfulness and prosocial behaviors discussed above. Such behaviors seem likely to contribute to a respectful and trusting relationship between leaders and their followers, thus contributing to leaders’ charismatic appeal. In sum, we suggest that leaders high on positive mood are likely to perform charismatic leadership behaviors. Positive mood is argued to enhance the optimistic, self-confident, creative, and risky behaviors associated with charismatic leadership, and to enhance leaders’ ability to develop and communicate an emotionally captivating vision and to gain followers’ trust and identification. In contrast, leaders low on positive mood are likely to lack these important benefits, thus engaging in charismatic leadership behaviors less frequently and less effectively than leaders high on positive mood. Supporting this notion, charismatic leadership has been associated with leaders’ trait positive affectivity (Rubin et al., 2005) and with leaders’ positive emotional expressions (Bono & Ilies, 2006; Schyns & Mohr, 2004). Also, charismatic leaders have been shown to generally exhibit high extraversion, which includes positive emotionality as a key feature (Bono & Judge, 2004). As Conger and Kanungo (1987, 1994) argued, followers assess their leaders’ charisma based on their perceptions of leaders’ actual behaviors (see also Fanelli & Misangyi, 2006). In sum, followers should therefore evaluate leaders in a positive mood to behave in a more charismatic manner than leaders who are not in a positive mood. Hypothesis 1. Leaders high on positive mood will exhibit more charismatic leadership behaviors (as rated by their followers) than leaders low on positive mood. Leaders’ Emotional Intelligence and Charismatic Leadership We chose to take an ability-based approach towards emotional intelligence, following the suggestions of numerous scholars in this field of research (e.g., Brown, Bryant, & Reilly, 2006; Brown & Moshavi, 2005; Daus & Ashkanasy, 2005; Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2004). According to this perspective, emotional intelligence incorporates a clearly defined set of abilities which are closely interrelated and build on each other. These abilities include the accurate appraisal and expression of own and others’ feelings, the effective use of feelings to improve cognitive processes and decision-making,
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knowledge about the causes, consequences, and developments of feelings, and the effective management of own and others’ feelings (George, 2000; Mayer et al., 2004; Wong & Law, 2002). Various researchers have theorized leaders’ emotional intelligence to strengthen their charismatic leadership by enabling leaders to arouse and inspire followers and to create charismatic authority (e.g., Ashkanasy & Tse, 2000; Prati et al., 2003). For instance, even before the notion of emotional intelligence was formally introduced, Wasiliewski (1985) suggested that leaders’ charisma crucially depends on their ability to evoke emotions in followers and to revoke and reframe these emotions so as to support the leader’s cause. As George (2000) argued, emotionally intelligent leaders should be particularly able to influence followers’ feelings due to these leaders’ understanding and skillful use of their own and their followers’ affect. Such leaders likely find it easier than those low on emotional intelligence to convincingly act as role models and to portray a confident, charismatic image of themselves, thus strengthening their charismatic appeal. Similarly, emotionally intelligent leaders should be able to create collective enthusiasm for a common vision and common aspirations by building upon and utilizing their own and their followers’ feelings (Sosik & Megerian, 1999). Leaders high on emotional intelligence are in an ideal position to realize the extent to which they can raise followers’ expectations (Barling et al., 2000). They can thus rally their followers behind an intriguing and challenging vision, which constitutes a cornerstone of charismatic leadership. Finally, leaders’ emotional intelligence has been argued to contribute to their charismatic leadership by enhancing their ability to positively design social interactions with followers (George, 2000). Emotional intelligence should enable leaders to empathically address their followers, thus building high-quality leader–follower relations and strengthening followers’ identification with and trust in the leader (Kellet, Humphrey, & Sleeth, 2006; Wolff, Pescosolido, & Druskat, 2002). Recent empirical findings have started to provide support for this suggested positive relationship between leaders’ emotional intelligence and their charismatic leadership behaviors. For instance, emotionally intelligent individuals have been shown to produce higher quality vision statements than those low on emotional intelligence (Mayer et al., 2004). Middleton (2005) reported a positive connection between individuals’ emotional intelligence and their emergence as charismatic leaders in a student sample. In managerial contexts, Mandell and Pherwani (2003) and Rubin et al. (2005) found the related construct of transformational leadership to be positively linked with leaders’ emotional intelligence. Similarly, the charismatic aspects of
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transformational leadership have been shown to positively relate to leaders’ emotional intelligence in various field study settings (e.g., Barbuto & Burbach, 2006; Barling et al., 2000; Gardner & Stough, 2002, Leban & Zulauf, 2004; Palmer, Walls, Burgees, & Stough, 2001). In sum, both theoretical considerations and recent empirical findings suggest that leaders high on emotional intelligence are more likely to perform charismatic leadership behaviors than leaders low on emotional intelligence. Such low emotional intelligence leaders are likely to lack knowledge and understanding of their own and their followers’ feelings and the ability to effectively utilize and influence these feelings, thus diminishing their performance of charismatic leadership behaviors. We therefore argue that leaders’ emotional intelligence is positively related to their charismatic leadership behaviors. Given prior evidence for the impacts of leaders’ emotional intelligence, and given that emotional intelligence covers a wide range of abilities related to the effective management of both own and others’ feelings (Mayer et al., 2004), we suggest that emotional intelligence contributes to charismatic leadership over and above the effects of positive mood. Hypothesis 2. Leaders high on emotional intelligence will exhibit more charismatic leadership behaviors (as rated by their followers) than leaders low on emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence will contribute to charismatic leadership over and above the effects of leaders’ positive mood. The Moderating Role of Leaders’ Emotional Intelligence The impacts of leaders’ positive mood and emotional intelligence on their charismatic leadership behaviors may be more thoroughly understood by considering a potential interactive relationship between these constructs. Particularly, we assert that the relationship between leaders’ positive mood and their charismatic leadership behaviors is moderated by emotional intelligence. Other research has similarly suggested emotional intelligence to moderate the relationship between individuals’ affective states and their subsequent behaviors (e.g., Ciarrochi, Chan, & Caputi, 2000; Jordan, Ashkanasy, & Ha¨rtel, 2002). However, emotional intelligence has not been investigated as a moderator of the leader positive mood–charismatic leadership linkage. We have argued above that charismatic leadership is contingent on leaders’ positive mood. While leaders high on positive mood may be in a
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good position to perform charismatic leadership behaviors, leaders low on positive mood should find it difficult to implement the respective leadership style. This relationship may, however, be crucially shaped by leaders’ emotional intelligence. We suggest that leaders with high emotional intelligence are able to effectively perform charismatic leadership behaviors even if they are not in a positive mood. Due to their self-awareness and their ability to understand the implications of their feelings (Sosik & Megerian, 1999; Wong & Law, 2002), emotionally intelligent leaders should recognize a lack of positive mood and understand its potential negative implications for their charismatic leadership. As Berkowitz, Jaffee, Jo, and Troccoli (2000) argued, such self-awareness is a crucial prerequisite for the effective regulation of the impacts of individuals’ moods on their cognition and behavior. If people are aware of their affective state and its potential consequences, and if they are motivated to arrive at accurate judgments and decisions irrespective of their affective state, they are more likely to successfully correct (and sometimes even over-correct) for feeling-induced biases (Berkowitz et al., 2000; Parrott & Sabini, 1990). Emotionally intelligent leaders should therefore be able to perceive positive aspects of their environments and to develop intriguing visions and aspirations even if their positive mood is low, thus retaining the ability to effectively perform charismatic leadership behaviors. In addition, individuals’ mood-management capability has been argued to constitute a defining feature of their emotional intelligence (Gohm, 2003; Mayer, 2001). Accordingly, Ciarrochi et al. (2000) found that both mood maintenance and mood repair were more pronounced for individuals high on emotional intelligence than for those low on emotional intelligence. Emotionally intelligent leaders should thus be able to effectively manipulate their own moods by deliberately suppressing or evoking specific affective states (George, 2000). This should allow them to quickly and effectively compensate for a lack of positive mood and to return to a more favorable mood state (Mayer et al., 2004). Hence, leaders’ emotional intelligence is likely to minimize the adverse implications of low positive mood for their charismatic leadership, as it enables them to avoid experiencing such a lack of positive mood over prolonged periods of time. Finally, the abilities associated with emotional intelligence should enable leaders to effectively engage in impression-management strategies (Dasborough & Ashkanasy, 2002). Emotionally intelligent leaders should be capable of self-monitoring and controlling the expression of their feelings to a greater extent than their low emotional intelligence counterparts (Mayer et al., 2004; Sosik, Avolio, & Jung, 2002). They may be able to
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conceal a lack of positive mood from their followers, presenting themselves in a charismatic manner irrespective of their mood state (cf. Sosik & Dworakivsky, 1998). Leaders high on emotional intelligence may deliberately perform optimistic, confident, and visionary behaviors and engage in expressions of positive mood even if their actual positive mood is low, thus constructing a charismatic image by enacting behaviors commonly associated with charismatic leadership (Gardner & Avolio, 1998). As Fox and Spector (2000) argued, non-verbal mood expressions ‘‘are generally taken as ‘authentic’ or ‘ungovernable’ representations of true feelings; therefore, the individual who is skillful in controlling these ‘ungovernable’ behaviors is at a distinct advantage in the exchanges that serve to create impressions and define social situations’’ (p. 205). Hence, emotionally intelligent leaders’ impression management capabilities seem likely to further reduce potentially unfavorable implications of low positive mood for their charismatic leadership behaviors. In sum, we argue that leaders’ emotional intelligence attenuates the relationship between positive mood and charismatic leadership. Emotionally intelligent leaders should be able to perform charismatic leadership behaviors irrespective of whether their positive mood is high or low. In contrast, leaders low on emotional intelligence are likely able to effectively perform charismatic leadership behaviors only when their positive mood is high, while low positive mood may prove detrimental for such leaders’ charismatic behaviors. Hypothesis 3. Leaders’ emotional intelligence moderates the relationship between leaders’ positive mood and their charismatic leadership behaviors (as rated by their followers). For leaders high on emotional intelligence, the relationship between positive mood and charismatic leadership will be less pronounced than for leaders low on emotional intelligence.
METHOD Data Collection and Sample Description Survey data for the present study were collected from a multinational company (headquartered in Germany) that specializes in the manufacturing of automotive component supplies. Leaders (N ¼ 85) from this company who were located in Germany or the U.S. received an e-mail invitation from the company’s Vice President of Human Resources Development describing
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the study’s purpose and providing a link to a web-based survey. This leader survey measured leaders’ positive mood and emotional intelligence. In addition, the leaders initially contacted received a second email from the company’s Vice President of Human Resources Development, which they were asked to forward to five or more of their direct followers. Included in this second email was a link to a follower survey, measuring followers’ evaluations of their direct leaders’ charismatic leadership behaviors. Both web-based surveys were hosted by the authors’ university, and participants were assured full confidentiality. Both surveys were offered in German and English. Translations were conducted through professional translators following a double-blind back-translation procedure. Company HR professionals checked for word usage and company-specific language. In sum, we gathered data for the predictor variables (leaders’ positive mood and emotional intelligence) from leaders themselves, while gathering the outcome variable measure (charismatic leadership behaviors) independently from those leaders’ direct followers. All participants were asked to indicate an assigned team code in the survey, enabling us to match leaders to their group of followers. To be included in the present study, leaders had to satisfy two criteria: First, the leader was required to complete his or her own questionnaire. Second, the respective leader had to have at least two direct followers providing ratings of his or her leadership (Rubin et al., 2005). In sum, 35 leaders met these inclusion requirements. We had to exclude one of these leaders due to excessive missing data. Hence, our final dataset consisted of 34 work groups, including one leader for each work group and 165 of these leaders’ direct followers. On average, each leader was rated by 5 of his or her followers (minimum ¼ 2; maximum ¼ 14). Because our level of analysis was the work group, our sample size of 34 was relatively small. As Lim and Ployhart (2004) argued, this is reflective of the general problem of gathering large group-level samples in field research. Participants in our study were primarily male (leaders: 88%; followers: 71%), between 31 and 55 years old (leaders: 79%; followers: 74%), and have been employed with the company for more than 5 years (leaders: 88%; followers: 75%). Participants came from all major divisions of the company, with the participating leaders representing different hierarchical levels (26% upper managers; 59% middle managers; 15% first-line supervisors). Of the 34 work groups included in the study, 29 were located in Germany (85%), while 5 were located in the United States (15%). Accordingly, the majority of respondents answered the German versions of the surveys (leaders: 82%; followers: 81%).
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Measures Leaders’ Positive Mood Leaders’ positive mood was measured in the leader survey using ten positive affect items from Van Katwyk, Fox, Spector, and Kelloway’s (2000) jobrelated affective well-being scale (JAWS). Leaders were asked to indicate how often they personally experienced the respective mood states (i.e., at ease, calm, content, ecstatic, energetic, enthusiastic, excited, inspired, relaxed, and satisfied) in their jobs on a 5-point scale, ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (extremely often or always). Responses to the 10 items were averaged to compute an overall positive mood score. Internal consistency reliability for this measure was .77. Leaders’ Emotional Intelligence We employed Wong and Law’s (2002) self-report emotional intelligence scale (WLEIS) in the leader survey to gauge leaders’ emotional intelligence. This 16-item instrument is based on the ability-model of emotional intelligence (e.g., Mayer et al., 2004). The WLEIS assesses four dimensions of emotional intelligence: self-emotion appraisal, others’ emotion appraisal, use of emotion, and regulation of emotion. Respondents were asked to rate themselves along these dimensions using a 5-point scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Following recommendations by Wong and Law (2002; see also Law, Wong, & Song, 2004), we averaged item responses for all dimensions of emotional intelligence to form an overall emotional intelligence score. The internal consistency estimate for this measure was .88. Charismatic Leadership Behaviors We used ratings from Bass and Avolio’s (2000) Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ 5x – short) in the follower survey to assess charismatic leadership behaviors. Particularly, we chose to utilize the eight items rating idealized influence (behavior) and inspirational motivation. These dimensions most clearly represent the behavioral aspects of charismatic leadership relevant for the present study (Bass & Avolio, 2000). We did not include the items measuring idealized influence (attributed), because they have been criticized for representing leadership impact and not leadership behavior (Kark, Shamir, & Chen, 2003; Yukl, 1999). Subordinates were asked to assess how often their direct superior exhibits the respective leadership behaviors on a 5-point scale, ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (frequently, if not always). Ratings for idealized influence (behavior) and inspirational
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67
motivation were highly correlated (r ¼ .86, po.001). Hence, we averaged item responses for all eight items to compute an overall charismatic leadership score, as is common practice in charismatic leadership research (e.g., Awamleh & Gardner, 1999; Sosik et al., 2002; Waldman et al., 2004). A confirmatory factor analysis showed that the respective one-factor model provided adequate fit to the data, with w2 ¼ 39.90 (d.f. ¼ 20; p o .01), comparative fit index ¼ .964, Tucker–Lewis index ¼ .935, and the root mean square error of approximation ¼ .078. We averaged followers’ ratings of charismatic leadership within the 34 work groups in our study. In order to establish the appropriateness of this aggregation, we calculated intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs; Bliese, 2000) and within-group agreement statistics (rwg; James, Demaree, & Wolf, 1984). While there are no absolute standards to justify aggregation based on these statistics, median rwg values of more than .70 and ICCs which are based on a significant F value are usually considered sufficient (Chen, Mathieu, & Bliese, 2004; Kenny & La Voie, 1985). For our measure of charismatic leadership, ICC(1) reached a value of .16, ICC(2) was .48, and the associated F value was statistically significant (F ¼ 1.93; po.01). The median rwg value (using a rectangular reference distribution) was .83. Hence, there was sufficient statistical support for aggregating followers’ charismatic leadership ratings to the group level. We should note that the ICC(2) value was somewhat low; however, this value is comparable to those found in prior leadership research (e.g., Bono & Anderson, 2005; Hofmann & Jones, 2005). As Bliese (2000) noted, ICC(2) values depend on group size. In the present study, groups with only two members were included, potentially resulting in a lower ICC(2). This is likely to attenuate group-level relationships (Bliese, 2000). Thus, our hypotheses tests and results should be interpreted as conservative. Internal consistency reliability for the charismatic leadership measure on the group level was .88. Control Variables Finally, we controlled for several variables in order to reduce the possibility of unmeasured influences biasing our results. First, we utilized the country in which the respective work groups were located as a dummy-coded control variable (1 ¼ Germany; 0 ¼ United States), because cultural factors may influence participants’ ratings of the study variables (cf. Schaffer & Riordan, 2003). We obtained this information from the company’s HR department. Second, we controlled for group size, because leaders may find it more difficult to behave in a charismatic manner when they are confronted with a large number of direct followers (cf. Atwater & Bass, 1994; Bass, 1990).
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Following Bliese and Halverson (1998), we estimated the group size by the number of follower respondents per work group. Third, we included the hierarchical level of the focal leader as a control variable. As Shamir and Howell (1999) argued, higher level leaders may find it easier to perform charismatic leadership behaviors than their lower level counterparts. We obtained leaders’ hierarchical level from the leader survey, where leaders were asked to classify themselves as either upper managers (coded as 1), middle managers (coded as 2), or first-line supervisors (coded as 3), using company-specific terminology. And finally, we controlled for positive group mood among followers (George, 1996). It has been shown that positive mood can favorably influence raters’ evaluations of other persons (Isen & Baron, 1991; Mayer, Gaschke, Braverman, & Evans, 1992). Accordingly, positive group mood among followers may positively bias their charismatic leadership ratings (cf. Brown & Keeping, 2005; Schyns & Sanders, 2003). We therefore included five items from a slightly modified version of the JAWS (Van Katwyk et al., 2000) in the follower survey to gauge positive group mood. Followers were asked to indicate how often the people in their work group experienced five positive mood states in their job on a scale from 1 (never) to 5 (extremely often or always). Based on acceptable aggregation statistics (ICC[1] ¼ .13; ICC[2] ¼ .41; F ¼ 1.70 [po.05], and median rwg ¼ .91), we averaged followers’ ratings of positive group mood within the 34 work groups in our study. Internal consistency reliability for this five-item measure of positive group mood on the group level was .77.1
Data Analyses We tested the study hypotheses using moderated hierarchical regression analysis (Cohen & Cohen, 1983). In a first hierarchical step, we regressed followers’ evaluations of charismatic leadership on the control variables. In step 2, we inserted leaders’ positive mood in order to test Hypothesis 1. In step 3, we inserted leaders’ emotional intelligence in order to test Hypothesis 2 And finally, we inserted the cross-product of leaders’ positive mood and emotional intelligence in the fourth hierarchical step in order to test Hypothesis 3 Both leaders’ positive mood and emotional intelligence were grand mean-centered before creating this interaction term (Aiken & West, 1991). Given the relatively small group-level sample size, it was necessary to carefully consider issues of statistical power in order to reduce the likelihood of committing Type II errors (cf. Lim & Ployhart, 2004). A power analysis
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(Cohen, 1988) showed that given a sample size of 34 work groups, there was a chance of 67% for detecting effects of r ¼ .40 at a significance level of po.05 (two-tailed); with a two-tailed test and po.10, power increased to 77%. We therefore considered values with po.10 (two-tailed) to be statistically significant when testing the study hypotheses (lower p values are reported, however, if applicable).
RESULTS Table 1 presents the means, standard deviations, and bivariate correlations for all study variables. As expected, followers’ evaluations of their direct leaders’ charismatic leadership behaviors were positively and significantly related to leaders’ positive mood (r ¼ .43; po.05) and emotional intelligence (r ¼ .54; po.01). Also as expected, we found followers’ ratings of charismatic leadership to be positively related to positive group mood among followers (r ¼ .34; po.05). Ratings of charismatic leadership were significantly less pronounced in Germany than in the United States (r ¼ –.36; po.05). Table 1.
Descriptive Statistics and Correlations.
Variable
M
SD
1
1. Country (Germany vs. USA) 2. Group size 3. Leader hierarchical level 4. Follower positive group mood 5. Leader positive mood 6. Leader emotional intelligence 7. Charismatic leadership behavior
.85
.36
–
4.85 1.88
2.90 .64
.15 .08
3.50
.35
3.78
.42
.04
3.92
.50
.29y
.45
.36
3.81
.41
2
3
– .06
–
.09
.05
(.77)
.01
.15
.17
.07
.09
.11
.49
.08
.34
.43
.15
4
5
6
7
(.77)
Note: N ¼ 34 work groups. Internal consistency reliabilities shown in brackets. po.01. po .05. y po.10.
(.88) .54
(.88)
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Results of the moderated hierarchical regression analysis are depicted in Table 2. As predicted in Hypothesis 1, the second step of the regression analysis showed a significant and positive relationship between leaders’ positive mood and charismatic leadership behaviors after taking into account the effects of the control variables (b ¼ .32, po.05). Thus, Hypotheses 1was supported. Similarly, step 3 of the regression analysis provided support for Hypothesis 2 After taking into account the effects of the control variables and of leaders’ positive mood, leaders’ emotional intelligence was significantly and positively related to followers’ evaluations of charismatic leadership behaviors (b ¼ .28, po.10). Leaders’ emotional intelligence contributed another 5% to the prediction of charismatic leadership, over and above the effects of control variables and leaders’ positive mood. Finally, the fourth step of the regression analysis tested Hypothesis 3 by inserting the interaction term of leaders’ positive mood and emotional intelligence. As Table 2 shows, this interaction term was significantly related to followers’ ratings of charismatic leadership (b ¼ –.26, po.10). The interaction of leaders’ positive mood and emotional intelligence contributed additional 6% to the explanation of this leadership style after taking into account control variables and main effects. According to McClelland and Judd (1993), additional explained variance of this magnitude is quite considerable in comparison with past research. These authors held that even moderator effects explaining as little as 1% of variance should be considered relevant in field research. In order to determine whether the interaction effect exhibited the form predicted in Hypothesis 3, we graphically depicted the interactive impacts of leaders’ positive mood and emotional intelligence on charismatic leadership, following the recommendations of Aiken and West (1991). In Fig. 1, we plotted the regression lines of leaders’ positive mood on charismatic leadership under two conditions – low emotional intelligence and high emotional intelligence (using 1 standard deviation below and above the mean as reference points). Supporting Hypothesis 3, the figure shows that the relationship between leaders’ positive mood and their charismatic leadership behaviors was moderated by emotional intelligence, with the positive mood–charismatic leadership linkage being less pronounced for leaders high on emotional intelligence than for those low on emotional intelligence. Emotionally intelligent leaders were perceived by their followers as performing charismatic leadership behaviors largely irrespective of whether the leaders were in a positive mood or not. In contrast, leaders low on emotional intelligence were more likely to be perceived as exhibiting charismatic leadership behaviors
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Table 2.
Moderated Hierarchical Regression Analysis.
Variables Entered
Charismatic Leadership
Step 1 Country (Germany vs. USA) Group size Leader hierarchical level Follower positive group mood R2 (adjusted R2)
.58 .11 .01 .59 .43 (.35)
Step 2 Country (Germany vs. USA) Group size Leader hierarchical level Follower positive group mood Leader positive mood DR2 R2 (adjusted R2)
.55 .11 .03 .53 .32 .10 .53 (.44)
Step 3 Country (Germany vs. USA) Group Size Leader hierarchical level Follower positive group mood Leader positive mood Leader emotional intelligence DR2 R2 (adjusted R2)
.45 .14 .03 .48 .20 .28y .05y .58 (.48)
Step 4 Country (Germany vs. USA) Group size Leader hierarchical level Follower positive group mood Leader positive mood Leader emotional intelligence Leader positive mood * leader emotional intelligence DR2 R2 (adjusted R2)
.45 .15 .06 .51 .21 .21 .26y .06y .63 (.53)
Note: N ¼ 34 work groups. Standardized regression weights are shown. po.001. po.01. po .05. y po.10.
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Charismatic leadership
4
3.9
3.8
Low emotional intelligence (-1 SD) High emotional intelligence (+1 SD)
3.7
3.6
3.5 Low (-1 SD)
High (+1 SD)
Leader positive mood
Fig. 1. Interactive Effects of Leaders’ Positive Mood and Emotional Intelligence on Charismatic Leadership. Note: SD: Standard Deviation.
when they were in a positive mood, while they were less likely to be perceived as exhibiting such behaviors when their positive mood was low.
DISCUSSION The goal of the present study was to examine the usefulness of leaders’ positive mood and emotional intelligence for the development of charismatic leadership behaviors. Broadly speaking, our results suggest that both of these constructs are positively related to charismatic leadership. Together, positive mood, emotional intelligence, and their interaction explained about 20% of the variance in charismatic leadership behaviors, over and above the impacts of control variables. It should be noted that these findings are not inflated by same source variance. While some of our results reinforce prior findings, others extend antecedent-oriented charismatic leadership research towards new areas. First, the present study extends prior research by considering leaders’ positive mood as a predictor of their charismatic leadership behaviors. Our results show that leaders’ positive mood may be an important antecedent of charismatic leadership, with leaders high on positive mood being more likely
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to perform such behaviors than their low positive mood counterparts. Hence, this study demonstrates that beyond the personality (e.g., House & Howell, 1992; Rubin et al., 2005), cognition (e.g., Sosik, 2005), or context (e.g., Shamir & Howell, 1999) based antecedents discussed in prior research, leaders’ affective state may play a crucial role in the emergence of charismatic leadership behaviors. Above this, the present study constructively replicates prior research demonstrating a positive link between emotional intelligence and charismatic leadership (e.g., Barling et al., 2000; Gardner & Stough, 2002; Mandell & Pherwani, 2003; Middleton, 2005; Palmer et al., 2001; Rubin et al., 2005). Together with these convergent research findings, our results strongly suggest that leaders’ emotional intelligence constitutes a crucial prerequisite for the performance of charismatic leadership behaviors. These accumulated research findings are encouraging, since various different measures of both charismatic leadership (or related constructs such as transformational leadership) and emotional intelligence have been utilized, producing largely equivalent outcomes. For instance, our study is the first to employ the WLEIS (Wong & Law, 2002) as an emotional intelligence measure predicting charismatic leadership behaviors. In addition, our study shows that leaders’ emotional intelligence predicts charismatic leadership behaviors over and above the impacts of leaders’ positive mood. Finally, we found the relationship between leaders’ positive mood and charismatic leadership to be moderated by emotional intelligence. For leaders high on emotional intelligence, this relationship was significantly less pronounced than for leaders low on emotional intelligence. It seems that emotionally intelligent leaders are able to compensate for a lack of positive mood and to perform high levels of charismatic leadership irrespective of their degree of positive mood. Such leaders’ charismatic behaviors seem to be largely decoupled from their affective state. On the other hand, our results also show that leaders in a positive mood are able to perform a high degree of charismatic leadership irrespective of their emotional intelligence. Even leaders low on emotional intelligence may be able to perform charismatic leadership behaviors as long as they are in a positive mood. Hence, leaders’ positive mood and emotional intelligence seem to substitute for each other in their roles as antecedents of charismatic leadership behaviors, in that each of these constructs allows leaders to compensate for a lack of the other one. Leaders seem to require either high levels of positive mood or high levels of emotional intelligence in order to be able to lead in a charismatic manner.
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Limitations In spite of some methodological strengths of this study (e.g., independent data sources for the predictor and outcome variables, multiple raters of leadership behavior), there are limitations that call for attention in interpreting the results. First, the relatively small group-level sample size deserves mentioning, as it may limit the generalizability of the findings. Particularly, given our small sample, we considered values with po.10 (two-tailed) to be statistically significant in hypotheses testing, in order to reduce the Type II error rate. As indicated above, this issue is reflective of the general problem of attaining large group-level samples in field research (e.g., Bono & Anderson, 2005; Hofmann & Stetzer, 1996; Lim & Ployhart, 2004). On a second and related issue, the generalizability of our findings is further reduced as all our data were collected from one organization. Future research could achieve higher generalizability by collecting a larger grouplevel sample from multiple organizations. Third, we employed a cross-sectional research design, rendering it impossible to unambiguously determine the direction of causality. For instance, rather than leaders’ positive mood contributing to their charismatic leadership, followers’ perceptions of charismatic leadership might have resulted in more favorable leader–follower relations (Shamir et al., 1998), which may have contributed to leaders’ positive mood. Given the amount of extant research demonstrating an impact of individuals’ positive mood (e.g., Isen & Baron, 1991; Staw, Sutton, & Pelled, 1994) and emotional intelligence (e.g., Law et al., 2004; Mayer et al., 2004) on their subsequent behaviors, the direction of causality suggested in the present study appears likely. Nevertheless, we cannot exclude the reverse direction of causality based on our data, and even reciprocal relationships remain possible. Future research might utilize experimental or longitudinal studies to gain greater confidence about the flow of causality between leaders’ positive mood and emotional intelligence on the one hand and their charismatic leadership behaviors on the other hand. Fourth, even though we included various control variables in our analyses, we did not measure and control for a number of variables which might also influence charismatic leadership behaviors. For instance, a meta-analysis by Bono and Judge (2004) showed that the Big Five personality dimensions were significantly related to charismatic leadership. Controlling for such leader personality traits would have provided a more rigid test of our hypotheses. Finally, our findings may have suffered from attenuated relationships due to the unreliability of the group means of followers’ aggregated charismatic
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leadership ratings, as indicated by a relatively low ICC(2) value (Bliese, 2000). With a more reliable measure of charismatic leadership, it might have been possible to find even stronger relationships between leaders’ positive mood and emotional intelligence and their charismatic leadership behaviors.
Future Research Directions Beyond addressing these limitations, future research could explore the relationship between leaders’ positive mood and emotional intelligence and leadership behaviors other than charismatic leadership. Such research could for instance examine leadership behaviors like intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration, contingent reward, management by exception, and laissez-faire (cf. Antonakis, Avolio, & Sivasubramaniam, 2003; Bass, 1985). Some studies have investigated the connection between leaders’ emotional intelligence and such leadership styles (e.g., Barling et al., 2000; Gardner & Stough, 2002; Palmer et al., 2001; Rubin et al., 2005). It would be interesting to extend these investigations to also incorporate leaders’ positive mood and potential interactive relationships between positive mood and emotional intelligence. Moreover, while the present study has concentrated on leaders’ positive mood, scholars might also examine the role of leaders’ negative mood in influencing various leadership behaviors. Positive and negative mood usually cannot be assumed to have inverse effects (Isen & Baron, 1991). Also, leaders’ trait negative affectivity has been shown to be unrelated to charismatic leadership (Rubin et al., 2005). Nevertheless, individuals’ negative mood has been found to influence their thinking and behavior in ways that might be relevant for other leadership behaviors. Negative mood has been argued to be part of a generally aversive mind-set (Fiedler, 2000), negatively biasing individuals’ judgments (Eich & Macaulay, 2000), pointing their attention towards impending threats (Bless, 2000), and promoting a thorough and analytic style of thinking (Elsbach & Barr, 1999). Leaders’ negative mood has been shown to be contagious towards followers (Sy, Coˆte´, & Saavedra, 2005) and to influence followers’ level of activation (Lewis, 2000). Future research could contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the role of affect in leadership emergence by investigating how leaders’ negative mood influences their leadership behaviors to produce such outcomes. The present study has argued and found leaders’ positive mood to enhance their charismatic leadership behaviors. However, some scholars have
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pointed to the possibility that individuals might become ‘‘too positive’’ (Judge & Ilies, 2004, p. 154; see also Fredrickson & Losada, 2005), with exaggerated positive mood diminishing people’s attention towards potentially disconfirming information and promoting a superficial style of thinking (cf. Bless, 2000; Elsbach & Barr, 1999). Excessively positive leaders might thus tend to lose touch with reality and to become overly visionary and idealistic (Conger, 1990), eventually harming their charismatic leadership. As George (2000) argued, leaders’ emotional intelligence may be crucial in avoiding such negative effects of extreme positive mood, allowing leaders to retain a realistic picture of their environment irrespective of their mood state. Future research could elaborate on the role of positive mood in charismatic leadership emergence by empirically investigating such potentially negative effects of extreme positive mood and by examining a possible moderating role of emotional intelligence in this relationship. Finally, while prior theory and research has usually focused either on contextual antecedents of charismatic leadership (e.g., Shamir & Howell, 1999), or – like the present study – has concentrated on leader characteristics (e.g., George, 2000), integrating both perspectives into a common framework might prove fruitful. The Affective Events Theory (AET) put forward by Weiss and Cropanzano (1996) may provide a useful starting point for such research. This model suggests that both work environment features and personality dispositions influence individuals’ affective reactions, which in turn shape individuals’ attitudes and behaviors in the workplace (Weiss & Beal, 2005; Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). From this AET perspective, leaders’ positive mood may serve as an important mediator linking characteristics of the work environment and leaders’ personality traits with their charismatic leadership behaviors. Given the results of the present study, we might add emotional intelligence to this model as a moderator of the positive mood–charismatic leadership linkage. Such an affective events model of charismatic leadership emergence could integrate various streams of research considering different antecedents of charismatic leadership. It comprises personality-based (e.g., Bono & Judge, 2004), contextual (e.g., Shamir & Howell, 1999), and cognitive (e.g., Bommer et al., 2004; Wofford, Goodwin, & Whittington, 1998) perspectives, as well as approaches such as the one put forward in the present study, with leaders’ positive mood and emotional intelligence as key antecedents of charismatic leadership (see also George, 2000). Further developing and testing such an integrative model could advance a more comprehensive understanding of the processes that lead to the development of charismatic leadership.
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Practical Implications The present research suggests that rather than stressing ‘‘rationalist preferences’’ (Beatty, 2000, p. 334; see also Putnam & Mumby, 1993), organizations should acknowledge the relevance of affective factors in charismatic leadership emergence if they are to strengthen their managers’ charismatic leadership behaviors and to benefit from the positive impacts of such leadership (cf. Lowe et al., 1996). In order to enable their leaders to effectively perform charismatic leadership behaviors, companies should aim at nurturing leaders’ positive mood and/or at strengthening leaders’ emotional intelligence. This carries important practical implications in terms of leader selection, leadership development, and the design of leaders’ work environment. First, organizations could utilize personality and emotional intelligence tests as important selection criteria when recruiting or promoting individuals for leadership positions (Cascio, 2003; Sosik & Megerian, 1999). Personality tests might for instance assess candidates’ positive affectivity or extraversion. These personality dimensions have been argued to represent individuals’ general tendency towards positive feelings, with individuals high on positive affectivity or extraversion frequently experiencing positive mood states (George, 1992). By preferentially selecting individuals for leadership positions who score high on positive affectivity or extraversion and/or who achieve high emotional intelligence scores on instruments such as the Mayer–Salovey–Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (Mayer et al., 2004), companies might be able to enhance the potential for charismatic leadership behaviors in their newly hired or promoted leaders (cf. Rubin et al., 2005). Second, organizations could incorporate emotional intelligence in their leadership development efforts, striving to enhance the emotional intelligence of their current leaders. Tests of emotional intelligence might be used as diagnostic tools to identify leaders’ strengths and weaknesses with regard to emotional intelligence (Gardner & Stough, 2002). These results could then form the basis for coaching and training programs aimed at improving the abilities associated with emotional intelligence (Mayer & Caruso, 2002; Watkin, 2000). Given that we have shown leaders’ emotional intelligence to strengthen their charismatic leadership and to decouple their performance of such leadership behaviors from the potential ups and downs of their current mood states, such emotional intelligence training efforts may be particularly worthwhile. Finally, organizations could try to nurture leaders’ positive mood by creating a favorable work environment. Research suggests that there are
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several levers to promote employees’ positive mood through favorable working conditions, reaching from work-group characteristics to organizational reward and punishment systems and even the physical setting of the workplace (for an overview see Brief & Weiss, 2002). Above this, top managerial leadership may play a key role in contributing to middle- and lowerlevel leaders’ positive mood. Charismatic leadership itself may be crucial in this respect. Scholars have frequently demonstrated charismatic leadership to arouse followers emotionally and to enhance their positive feelings (e.g., Ashkanasy & Tse, 2000; Howell & Frost, 1989; Pirola-Merlo et al., 2002). By exhibiting strong charismatic leadership at the top of the organization, a positive affective climate may be created throughout the company (cf. Bass, 1990), enhancing middle- and lower-level leaders’ positive mood and contributing to the cascading of charismatic leadership across the organizational hierarchy (cf. Bass, Waldman, Avolio, & Bebb, 1987). Conclusion Clearly, research on the relationship between leaders’ positive mood and emotional intelligence and their charismatic leadership behaviors is only in its beginnings (cf. Brown & Moshavi, 2005). The present study has taken some steps towards understanding the connection between these constructs, pointing to the key role affective factors may play in charismatic leadership emergence. We hope that by building on the current findings, future research will be able to deepen our knowledge about the antecedents and prerequisites of charismatic leadership, eventually contributing to the quality of leadership in organizations.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors thank Michael S. Cole for his advice and for providing helpful and constructive comments on earlier versions of this chapter. We also thank Silja Drack for her assistance in data collection.
NOTE 1. Initially, we had attempted to measure positive group mood among followers using the same ten positive affect items that we also used to gauge leaders’ positive mood. Aggregation to the group level was not feasible for this 10-item measure
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however, with ICCs approaching zero and the associated F value failing to reach statistical significance. Inspection of aggregation statistics revealed that only the lowintensity positive mood dimension (i.e., at ease, calm, content, relaxed, satisfied) identified by Van Katwyk et al. (2000) could be aggregated to the group level. Because we found it critical to control for a potential rating bias induced by positive group mood among followers, we chose to utilize this 5-item measure of positive group mood instead of omitting this control variable altogether.
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CHAPTER 4 TEAM EMOTION RECOGNITION ACCURACY AND TEAM PERFORMANCE Hillary Anger Elfenbein, Jeffrey T. Polzer and Nalini Ambady ABSTRACT Teams’ emotional skills can be more than the sum of their individual parts. Although theory emphasizes emotion as an interpersonal adaptation, emotion recognition skill has long been conceptualized as an individual-level intelligence. We introduce the construct of team emotion recognition accuracy (TERA) – the ability of members to recognize teammates’ emotions – and present preliminary evidence for its predictive validity. In a field study of public service interns working full-time in randomly assigned teams, taken together positive and negative TERA measured at the time of team formation accounted for 28.1% of the variance in team performance ratings nearly a year later.
CAN TEAMS HAVE EMOTIONAL SKILLS? THE CASE OF RECOGNIZING OTHERS’ EMOTIONS Emotion plays a central role in organizational life (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1995; Ashkanasy, 2003; Barsade & Gibson, 1998; Putnam & Mumby, 1993). Functionality, Intentionality and Morality Research on Emotion in Organizations, Volume 3, 87–119 Copyright r 2007 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1746-9791/doi:10.1016/S1746-9791(07)03004-0
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Everyday activities in the workplace are usually accompanied by feelings that serve to shape and lubricate social interactions (Fineman, 1993, 1996). Psychological theories emphasize that a key role for emotion is a tool for communication. Theorists within the social functionalist perspective have even argued that emotions evolved in part to provide an adaptive mechanism for individuals to coordinate their relationships and interactions with others (DePaulo & Friedman, 1998; Ekman, 1992; Keltner & Haidt, 1999; McArthur & Baron, 1983). We can exchange information in the form of signals about the internal states of others (Keltner & Gross, 1999), and perceiving these cues can allow people to adjust their behavior in ways that enhance the quality of interactions. The particular information exchanged through emotional cues is most often subtle and implicit, given that we use emotional cues particularly to communicate those messages that are more difficult or uncomfortable to express in a more explicit manner. It is rare to speak openly about one’s internal state, in part because development of the ability to communicate through emotional cues largely precedes higherorder explicit communication processes (Buck, 1984), and because emotional cues are sent frequently without awareness (Buck, 1984; Gross, 2001). Given the ubiquity of communicating via subtle emotional cues, this study attempts to extend previous work in this area by examining emotion communication within teams.
Emotional Expression as Communication Communicating via emotional signals can be particularly valuable for coordinating interdependent activities and teamwork. It can provide usable information regarding the reactions, intentions, preferences, and likely future behaviors of others in the workplace (Ashkanasy, Hartel, & Zerbe, 2000; Rafaeli & Sutton, 1989; Riggio, 2001). Colleagues, customers, and other stakeholders continually attribute meaning to the expressive displays of those around them, whether they interpret correctly or misunderstand. In addition to the flow of information that is directly workplace-relevant, communication on an emotional level can also serve as an act of sharing that personalizes workplace relationships, builds mutual understanding and empathy, and provides feedback and interpersonal influence (Ashkanasy et al., 2000; Putnam & Mumby, 1993; Rafaeli & Sutton, 1989). Judgments of others’ feelings are crucial to maintaining the quality and continuation of relationships in and out of the workplace (Fineman, 1993; Izard, 2001).
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Previously researchers have considered the workplace importance of emotion communication at the individual rather than interpersonal level. Emotion recognition accuracy (ERA) has been the focus of research attention for decades, with renewed attention under the umbrella of emotional intelligence (Ciarrochi, Chan, & Caputi, 2000; Davies, Stankov, & Roberts, 1998; Mayer, Salovey, Caruso, & Sitarenios, 2001; Roberts, Zeidner, & Matthews, 2001). Consistent with the value of emotional signals in providing information about others’ internal states, individual ERA has long been associated with positive outcomes in organizational settings. Typical studies use standardized tests in which participants judge the emotional content of photographs of facial expressions, audiotapes of vocal tones, and video clips of body movement, and find a positive relationship between the accuracy of these judgments and various organization-relevant outcome variables. Results have replicated across industries and positions as diverse as business executives, foreign service officers, teachers, elementary school principals, and human service workers (Rosenthal, Hall, DiMatteo, Rogers, & Archer, 1979), therapists (Campbell, Kagan, & Krathwohl, 1971; Costanzo & Philpott, 1986; Schag, Loo, & Levin, 1978), doctors (DiMatteo, Friedman, & Taranta, 1979; Tickle-Degnen, 1998), and children in academic settings (Halberstadt & Hall, 1980; Izard, 1971; Izard et al., 2001; Nowicki & Duke, 1994). These findings suggest that being able to understand others’ emotions is of highly general value to individual effectiveness.
Emotion Recognition as a Team Competency The social functionalist perspective emphasizes that the benefits of emotion in the workplace arise largely in coordinating relationships and interactions. Thus, it is valuable to extend the focus on skills such as ERA beyond the individual level to the interpersonal level as well. Organizations increasingly rely on interdependence among employees as part of daily life (Wageman, 2001). Succeeding in such environments requires effective skills for coordinating with others, and emotional abilities such as ERA are likely to be among these necessary skills (Jordan & Ashkanasy, 2006). The present study investigates whether the recognition of colleagues’ emotions can vary across teams within the same organization shortly after they are formed, even when the teams draw membership randomly from the same population of individuals. That is, can teams differ from each other meaningfully in terms of their emotional abilities – with team ERA taking on a form that is qualitatively distinct from merely aggregating the abilities
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of the individuals involved? Three areas of recent research speak to the importance of raising and empirically testing this question. First, a recent stream of research documenting the experience of group moods (for reviews, see Barsade & Gibson, 1998; Kelly & Barsade, 2001) suggests that emotion recognition skill might exist at the team level. George (1990) found that teams could have distinct affective tone, which she defined as consistent emotional reactions by members of a work group. Likewise, Totterdell, Kellett, Teuchmann, and Briener (1998) found evidence that individual moods of both nurses and accountants were influenced over time by the collective mood of nearby colleagues. Bartel and Saavedra (2000) found that many diverse types of work groups converged in their mood, assessed both behaviorally using observers and via self-reports of work group members. Further, there was significant variation among groups in the extent of this convergence (Bartel & Saavedra, 2000; George, 1990). These studies argue that the feeling states of work group members can be meaningfully considered as a team-level phenomenon. Apart from shared experiences that can lead to feeling similar emotions, the mechanism implicated for these findings has been emotional contagion (e.g., Barsade, 2002; Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994), the act of catching an emotional state from another person. Emotional contagion occurs through the primitive mimicry of another person’s emotional expressions or through a conscious understanding of another person’s emotional state, either of which can lead to sharing that emotional experience. We argue that emotion recognition can be implicated as a building block for emotional contagion, in that one must be able to recognize another person’s emotional state in order to understand it consciously. Even non-conscious mimicry requires that an expression be recognizable on an implicit level, in that completely inscrutable or unintelligible expressions can be mimicked but such mimicry would not, in turn, lead to the efference process of facial, vocal, or body feedback by which individuals experience an emotion from the act of expressing it (Hatfield, Hsee, Costello, & Weisman, 1995; Zajonc, Murphy, & Inglehart, 1989). Taken together, this suggests that teams in which members can better understand each other’s emotional states may come to share those emotional states more strongly, and that evidence for variability in the convergence of mood across groups suggests there may be variability in the mutual understanding of teammates’ emotional states. A second area providing support for examining the emotion recognition skill of teams comes from researchers interested in team competencies, norms, and effectiveness. Flynn and Chatman (2003) have argued that group norms can develop early in the life of teams, starting from dyadic
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perceptions through a process whereby teammates make judgments of each other, and these judgments trigger behavioral responses that iterate among members ultimately to form group-wide norms. In as much as group norms include a wide range of rules to guide behavior as a means to enhance group functioning and survival, to make members’ behavior more predictable, to avoid embarrassing interpersonal situations, and to express core values (Feldman, 1984), patterns of communication can be central to group norms. Correspondingly, the exchange of information more generally has been considered a source of team-level competencies (e.g., Hambrick, 1994) because, although it is often pairs of individuals and sub-groups that directly exchange information, the dyads within teams tend to reciprocate teammates’ behaviors, and mutually influence each other. Likewise, Polzer, Milton, and Swann (2002) found that the mutual ability of dyads within groups to understand each other’s social identities varied meaningfully across work groups. Druskat and Kayes (1999) argued that effective interpersonal behaviors are a form of team-level competency, and they argue in particular that these behaviors include the perception and interpersonal understanding of members’ spoken and unspoken feelings. Using interviews and questionnaires at a large manufacturing firm, they found evidence of significant variation across teams in these interpersonal skills. Just as there can be general communication and interpersonal skills that vary across teams, we argue that team-level skills can exist specifically for the exchange of information via emotional channels. A final related area of research suggests that ERA has emergent properties beyond the individual level. Early research in this area focused exclusively on ERA as a stable trait, using standardized tests in which skill was assessed by accuracy in perceiving consistent stimuli consisting of the expressions of strangers (Rosenthal et al., 1979). However, this may not be the same as accuracy in perceiving the actual colleagues with whom one is working, because interaction partners are not simply interchangeable. There is some evidence that people may learn to identify more accurately the specific emotional expressions of relationship partners early on (Sabatelli, Buck, & Dreyer, 1982) – even though there is no evidence for further increases in accuracy within long-term relationships (Ansfield, DePaulo, & Bell, 1995; Sabatelli, Buck, & Dreyer, 1980) – which would suggest that teammates may be better at understanding each other’s emotional expressions than those of strangers. Because the communication of emotion is inherently interactive, a view of emotional skill that incorporates only stable individual differences across perceivers is incomplete. Indeed, Elfenbein, Foo, Boldry, and Tan (2006) found that – in addition to individual
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differences in the ability to perceive emotional expressions, and individual differences in the complementary ability to express one’s emotions clearly to others – there can also be unique ‘‘relationship’’ effects as well. That is, in judging each other’s emotional expressions, some previously unacquainted dyads systematically appeared to ‘‘click,’’ so that the perceiver understood the expressor’s emotions better than the skill levels of the individuals would have predicted. Likewise, other dyads appeared to ‘‘cross wires,’’ so that the perceiver systematically failed to understand the expressor in spite of the general skill of the individuals involved. Styles of emotional expression can vary idiosyncratically – without necessarily being ‘‘better’’ or ‘‘worse’’ – and from the beginning of a relationship we may be able to judge more accurately those expressions appearing in a familiar style. These findings suggest that dyads as well as individuals can be more or less emotionally intelligent, which argues for the importance of examining emotional abilities beyond the individual level. Groups may have coherent emotional skills – including ERA – that may be more than the sum of its parts.
Team Emotion Recognition Accuracy Our recent work established evidence that teams can have meaningful differences in a particular emotional skill, which emerge at the group level as more than a mere aggregation of skill of the individuals involved. The act of communicating does not occur alone; an audience is always implied (Goffman, 1956). This distinguishes the understanding of emotions from other emotional abilities such as emotional regulation. Thus, accuracy in understanding colleagues’ emotional states is a particularly relevant emotional skill to examine in a team context. Moving beyond the individual level examined by past researchers requires new concepts as well as empirical work to validate these concepts, which is the goal of the current study. We introduce the construct of Team Emotion Recognition Accuracy (TERA), which we define as the ability of teammates to recognize emotions expressed by their colleagues. Based on past research, there are two potential mechanisms from which to expect that teams could vary systematically in their degree of TERA – even if the teams do not differ in the general accuracy of their members in perceiving emotions. The first mechanism is that some teams may have members who match or mismatch with each other in terms of their emotional expressive style before they even meet, and thus who may understand each other better or worse than their individual skills would predict
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(Elfenbein et al., 2006). The second mechanism is that team members may be able to learn about each other’s emotional styles when they first meet (Sabatelli et al., 1982), and their interest and ability in doing so could vary meaningfully across work groups. Druskat and Kayes’ (1999) and Polzer et al.’s (2002) findings of meaningful variation across teams in skills of interpersonal effectiveness and understanding would imply that teams’ members could vary systematically in their degree of learning of each other’s emotional styles. Teams with healthy interpersonal norms may encourage greater mutual understanding among colleagues, whereas teams with lesseffective interpersonal norms may discourage the attention and motivation to mutually understanding colleagues’ internal states. Both of these mechanisms could lead to TERA that is different from the mere aggregation of individual abilities. It is worthwhile to distinguish this new concept of TERA from the existing concept of group mood. For example, in the course of its work, a product development team may learn about the rejection of an important proposal. Due to this shared event, as well as emotional contagion from those with strong reactions, the group mood might involve sadness and disappointment. By contrast, TERA is a meta-concept referring to whether team members are aware of how their colleagues feel – rather than the extent to which they feel the same way. In this sense, TERA shares a commonality with the concept of team transactive memory (e.g., Moreland, 1999), the sharing of mental models among colleagues (Austin, 2003). In the project team example, high TERA might mean that members know who among them are the most disappointed, versus who might even be somewhat relieved.
Requirements of Team Emotion Recognition Accuracy In addition to the above arguments that TERA is coherent theoretically at the team level, there are certain empirical requirements that it must meet. For TERA to be a group-level construct, it must satisfy two criteria (Kenny & La Voie, 1985). The first requirement is that TERA must converge across group members. A construct cannot be said to describe the team unless members of each team are more similar to each other than they are to the members of other teams. Second, TERA must be conceptually meaningful at the group level. That is, TERA must be a characteristic of the team and not just describe the individuals on the team. In order to establish this distinction, we demonstrate empirically that TERA as a group-level
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construct is distinct from its individual-level counterpart. That is, in addition to TERA, the present study also examines General Emotion Recognition Accuracy (GERA), which is the ability to understand emotions that are expressed by non-teammates. TERA differs from GERA in that TERA focuses on accuracy at understanding teammates whereas GERA focuses on accuracy at understanding expressors in general. Both TERA and GERA can be measured at the individual level and then aggregated to the team level, with different conceptual meanings. Conceptually, team-level GERA is the equivalent of aggregating teammates’ individual-level scores on the type of standardized emotion recognition measures typically used in previous research. Conceptually, by contrast, team-level TERA is not a mere aggregation of individual scores, but rather a measure of mutual understanding within the team. Thus, TERA meets the requirement of describing the team rather than its individuals. Empirically, then, it is important to demonstrate that TERA converges among team members to a greater degree than GERA, which we do not expect to converge among team members (Fig. 1). The goal of this study is to introduce the construct of TERA, and to document its validity with respect to these two empirical requirements. In particular, we hypothesize that there is significant convergence among teammates in TERA, which is greater than any convergence observed in GERA or other strictly individual difference concepts.
A. Team Emotion Recognition Accuracy (TERA)
B. General Emotion Recognition Accuracy (GERA)
Judges and Targets: Teammates
Targets: Non-Teammates Judges
Fig. 1.
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Representation of Team and General Emotion Recognition Accuracy.
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Team Outcomes and Emotional Valence TERA should facilitate effectiveness, both in terms of performance as well as promoting a more positive social environment, because it allows more effective communication and interpersonal coordination. Making the interactions among colleagues smoother and more predictable should improve the quality of those interactions. For example, team members who understand each other’s emotional reactions may be able to refrain from behaviors that irritate or upset their colleagues, and may be able to increase the behaviors that impress or amuse them. By contrast, team members who cannot understand their colleagues’ emotions may miss the opportunity for such feedback that helps them to adjust their behavioral repertoire. Thus, the second goal of this study is to test the impact of TERA on workplace performance and social outcomes, with the hypothesis that greater TERA facilitates greater team effectiveness and cohesion among colleagues. The social functionalist theoretical framework that grounds the above hypothesis argues for their applicability across the various emotions that individuals can experience, express, and recognize in their workplace colleagues. After all, the subtle cues relevant to coordinating interpersonal interactions can take many forms, and usable information via emotional signals can be transmitted via many different emotions. However, other streams of research on emotion in the workplace also emphasize the importance of distinguishing between positivity and negativity when studying the associations between emotional tendencies and performance. In the case of emotional expression, in many environments positive emotion is particularly encouraged in the workplace, along with the suppression of negative emotion. For example, those who self-report more positivity in their emotional traits generally experience superior workplace outcomes (e.g., Staw & Barsade, 1993; Staw, Sutton, & Pelled, 1994; Wright & Staw, 1999). Staw et al. (1994) theorized that such positive emotions have positive consequences due to an association with greater productivity and persistence, as well as impacting employees’ relationships with colleagues. That is, feeling and expressing positive emotions on the job can lead to smoother social interactions, more helping behaviors, and a favorable ‘‘halo effect.’’ Further, research on emotional contagion (e.g., Hatfield et al., 1994) demonstrates that people tend to mirror the emotional states and behaviors of those around them. Taken together, these research streams suggest that greater accuracy with positive and negative expressions of emotion could lead team members to experience and express positive and negative feelings and behavior, respectively, possibly also generating positive and negative
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workplace consequences, respectively. For this reason, analyses are conducted separately by emotional state, with a particular focus on the possible distinction between patterns for positive and negative emotion.
METHOD A series of interviews and judgment exercises, conducted with public service interns beginning a full-time job program, assessed the accuracy of team members in understanding each other’s emotions (TERA). Participants also judged emotions expressed by non-teammates in order to measure the general emotional accuracy (GERA) of the individuals on each team.
Participants Participants were employed full-time for one year by a non-profit organization that provides community services in underprivileged neighborhoods. The bulk of its work is conducted in teams, for which it assigns individuals using block randomization, blocking along gender, ethnicity, and city versus sub-urban upbringing. Members were young adults between 17 and 23 years of age, working interdependently in teams to perform a variety of functions such as serving as assistant teachers, after-school and day-camp counselors, disaster relief workers, assistants to local charities, and other public service roles working mostly with ‘‘at-risk’’ groups. Participants were unacquainted with teammates before the program began. Of the 114 members enrolled in the program, 68 members (60%) across 14 teams completed the majority of measures described below and were included in analyses. There were no systematic differences between these 68 members and the larger group of 114 in demographic composition (gender t(112) ¼ 1.218, ns; ethnicity w2(4) ¼ 6.997, ns; age t(92) ¼ .361, ns, for those with age data available). Emotions This study includes the four basic emotions that previous investigations of ERA have had in common – anger, fear, happiness, and sadness (e.g., Ekman, 1972; Izard, 1971; Nowicki & Duke, 1994). The study also includes embarrassment, which has been implicated for particular relevance to workplace life due to its role in maintaining social order and appeasement
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for transgressions across social convention (Fineman, 1993, 1996; Goffman, 1956; Keltner & Buswell, 1997; Tangney, 2003). Given that the experience of embarrassment can range from light-hearted humor to deep humiliation and shame, an additional pilot test examined the scenarios generated by the interview protocol outlined below. The scenarios were considered significantly more amusing than either humiliating, t(19) ¼ 2.58, po.02, or shameful, t(19) ¼ 3.46, po.003, by three research assistants rating the fulllength segments from a random sample of 20 (24%) of the 82 interviews (inter-rater reliability ¼ .77). Thus, the emotion is relabeled ‘‘Amused/ Embarrassed.’’ In light of extensive theory concerning differences in organizational outcomes for positive versus negative emotion (e.g., George, 1990; Isen & Baron, 1991; Staw et al., 1994), results are presented below for each emotion individually, and aggregated for positive (happiness, amused/ embarrassed) and negative (anger, fear, sadness) emotional categories.
Phase 1: Individual Interviews Either during the month before the program began or within the first week of orientation, 82 employees (72%) participated in an individual videotaped interview protocol designed to provide examples of affective displays using a validated method of emotion induction. Eliciting emotion through the guided recall of past events from participants’ lives has become a common and well-tested method in research on emotional expression and experience, and has been extensively validated with both clinical and non-clinical populations as an effective elicitor of emotional responding. The guided recall of past highly emotional events reliably predicts self-ratings of emotional experience (Dunn & Schweitzer, 2005; Lerner & Keltner, 2001; Levenson, Carstensen, Friesen, & Ekman, 1991; Strack, Schwarz, & Gschniedinger, 1985; Tiedens & Linton, 2001; Tsai, Chentsova-Dutton, Freire-Bebeau, & Przymus, 2002), facial expressions and autonomic nervous system activity corresponding to the emotion recalled (Levenson et al., 1991; Tsai et al., 2002), and effects on factors such as optimism and decision-making styles that correspond to dispositional findings for the same emotions (Lerner & Keltner, 2001). Thus, guided recall appears to provide an authentic yet controlled method for emotion elicitation. Accordingly, the initial interviews followed a protocol in which participants described and were asked to relive real experiences that had occurred in an organizational setting, either in a previous workplace or in school. To provide an opportunity to select past experiences without time pressure,
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participants first completed a survey prompting them to recall experiences during which they had felt each emotion very strongly, while at work or at school, with the order of emotions varying between participants according to a balanced Latin Square. The interviewer instructed participants to look at a large sign with the name of the emotion, which positioned them to face a video camera while speaking. In order to eliminate non-verbal feedback and to limit interaction, the interviewer sat behind the interviewee, outside of the camera’s range, and was the only other person present in the room. In keeping with Strack et al.’s (1985) finding that the recall of past events triggers greater affect when recalled vividly and in detail, and when discussing how rather than why events occurred, the interviewee was asked to discuss each experience in detail, to repeat what he or she actually said and did at the time, and to use first-person language while trying to put himself or herself back into the situation. Although there has traditionally been a distinction between the spontaneous expression of emotion versus socially conscious displays (e.g., Ekman, 1972), more recent perspectives such as Fridlund’s (1994) behavioral ecology theory of emotion have argued that expression at its core is a social phenomenon, over which we have a continuum of intentional control. Indeed, research participants in truly non-social spontaneous settings are frequently non-expressive (Fridlund, 1991, 1994). Thus, the current method was intended to elicit samples of emotional expression similar to those that participants might actually choose to display in their workplace settings. Interviews lasted an average of 10–15 min. Participants were asked not to discuss the content of their interviews with teammates until after the subsequent phases of the study.
Phase 2: Creation of Video Stimuli Stimuli consisted of 5-s video clips that illustrated each interviewee’s style of expressing each emotion. Choice of Video Clips Due to variability in the amount of time during which interviewees described their emotional events and repeated their reactions, some judgment was necessary in selecting the most representative 5-s portion. The criterion was to select the first feasible section after participants began their firstperson description. Sections were unfeasible if they included revealing verbal content, which was defined as words that (1) used the name of the emotion,
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(2) provided sufficient context for another person to identify what emotion they would likely feel, or (3) violated the privacy of the interviewee through sensitive language or proper names. For example, if an interviewee said, ‘‘I am so happy because of what just happened,’’ the video clip could include the sentence removing the single word ‘‘happy,’’ both the audio and video portions to prevent lip reading. Using these criteria, the first author selected the video clips from the interviews. In order to assess the reliability of this process, a research assistant also coded 25 emotional expressions from five different interviewees. Inter-rater reliability was .82, which increased to .90 upon re-coding of one segment for which one judge provided a second choice that was close to the segment chosen by the other judge. The goal of this study is to examine the communication of emotion as it naturally occurs in organizational settings. Emotion can be expressed through many cues – ranging from strictly verbal cues to non-verbal cues such as facial expressions, vocal tones, and body language (Ekman & Friesen, 1969). Past research on the communication of naturalistic emotion has excluded explicit verbal content from stimulus materials, yet included implicit verbal content that may provide information about an expressor’s emotional state (e.g., Archer & Akert, 1977; Costanzo & Archer, 1989; Mayer & Geher, 1996). Rather than eliminate verbal content entirely through methods that disrupt the ecology of naturalistic emotional expression – such as still photographs (e.g., Izard, 1971), silent videos or filtered vocal samples (e.g., Rosenthal et al., 1979), or standardized scripted verbal content intended to provide paralinguistic cues but not information from the words themselves (e.g., Nowicki, 2000) – we sought to preserve as much as possible of the participants’ original expressions and minimize only explicit verbal cues. A pilot test confirmed that the verbal content remaining in the video clips did not provide sufficient information alone to judge the intended emotion. Six research assistants coded written transcripts of the 5-s video clips, rating how plausible it would be for each transcript to refer to a story about each of the five emotions – afraid, angry, embarrassed, happy, and sad, using a scale from 1 to 5 (reliability ¼ .77). Consistent with the inclusion of implicit verbal content, the judges did in fact rate the correct responses as more plausible than the incorrect responses, t(358) ¼ 7.30, po.01, r ¼ .36. However, judges could not use the verbal information alone to select the correct response, because upon removing for each video clip the item rated as the least plausible, the correct response was no longer rated as more plausible than the remaining three choices, t(358) ¼ 1.58, ns, r ¼ .08. That is, given the verbal content alone, each video clip had on average four choices that
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were equally plausible. Thus, participants could not achieve accurate responding based on the verbal content alone, but they could use it to rule out one implausible choice for each clip. These pilot findings are consistent with our goal to minimize only explicit but not implicit verbal cues.
Phase 3: Judgments of Video Clips by Colleagues Team members participated in a judgment exercise one week after the teams formed, which was one week after the last interviews had taken place. At this point in the program, participants had been employed with the organization for less than two weeks of orientation, of which they knew their team assignments for one week. Although this was not long in terms of the oneyear lifetime of these intact teams, the 40 h of team-based training sessions and team-building activities represent a substantial amount of contact compared with teams studied in laboratory settings. Members were beginning to grow acquainted but had not yet begun their work together. A total of 82 employees (72%) participated in the judgment exercise. Non-Teammate Segment As a measure of general emotional accuracy (GERA), participants viewed video clips from a standardized sample of members from other teams. The non-teammate segment contained the video clips from all five emotions for 24 randomly selected participants, for an average of one to two members from each team. Block randomization, whereby each expressor appeared once before any expressor was repeated, reduced the possibility that judges could use process-of-elimination based on their memory of the emotions expressed in earlier clips. The order of emotions varied randomly. To reduce possible order effects due to practice or fatigue, the non-teammate segment was divided into two sections. Half of the teams viewed the two sections in one order and half viewed the other order. On average, in viewing this common sample, members of each team made judgments of one to two of their own teammates. However, such ratings were removed from the nonteammate data, and instead were analyzed with the teammate ratings described in the following section. Teammate Segment As a measure of TERA, participants viewed the video clips for each team member who had completed the emotion interview. Teammates who had already appeared in the non-teammate segment were not repeated in the
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teammate segment, which was distinct for each team. Video clips were block randomized and appeared in a random order. In order to reduce possible effects of stimulus order, the teammate segment appeared in between the two sections of the non-teammate segment. Procedure and Scoring Participants were instructed to make their best guess of the emotion discussed in each video clip, and to circle this judgment on a multiple-choice response sheet that listed the five choices: afraid, angry, embarrassed, happy, and sad. After each video clip, participants had 5 s to enter their judgments. Participants were told that they would see each emotion for each person, so that there was an equal chance that each response would be the correct answer. Video clip responses were scored as correct if the judge selected the emotion that the interviewee had been discussing during the portion of the interview from which the video clip was selected, which indicated that the judge perceived in the display the same emotion the expressor discussed. Accuracy values were then corrected for simple response bias. Otherwise, Pollyannish participants choosing positive responses for all video clips would have high accuracy with positive emotions and low accuracy with negative emotions – and dysphoric participants the opposite. Using Wagner’s (1993) correction formula eliminates the possibility that multiple-choice accuracy values reflect mere response bias. The formula multiplies accuracy values by 1 minus the rate of false alarms, in which a category is endorsed when it did not actually appear, and then normalizes this value using an Arcsine transformation. This correction is similar to signal detection methods except, unlike signal detection terms, it allows separate analyses for each emotion (Wagner, 1993). Instances of individuals rating their own emotional expressions were excluded (Kenny & La Voie, 1984).
Phase 4: Outcome Measures In order to assess performance and social outcomes at the end of the yearlong work program, participants and staff members at the organization completed a number of questionnaires. Although there is no single meaning that is commonly accepted for effectiveness within work groups, in general researchers agree that it is a multifaceted concept incorporating multiple perspectives and metrics (Goodman, Ravlin, & Schminke, 1987; Jones, 1997).
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Individual Performance Ratings At the completion of the program, the senior staff members provided performance ratings for the participants. Fourteen staff members completed these ratings, using a scale from 0 (extremely poor) to 10 (extremely great), and they left a blank response when they did not feel sufficiently acquainted to provide a judgment for a particular individual. Inter-rater reliability, the average product–moment correlation between raters (Rosenthal & Rosnow, 1991), which is equivalent to the ICC(1) (Bartko, 1976) was .38, and the Cronbach’s a for ratings across staff members, equivalent to the ICC(3) (Bartko, 1976) was .84. In addition to assessing individuals, staff members also rated the overall quality of the work conducted by the team. An average of 9.4 staff members rated each team. The inter-rater reliability, the average product–moment correlation between raters, was .55, and a for the composite was .92. In addition, between one and two weeks before the completion of the program, all remaining participants provided ratings for each individual who had been a part of their team over the course of the year. Sixty-three participants from the 14 teams completed these measures, for an average of 4.5 per team. Using a scale from 0 (not at all) to 10 (very much), team members rated to what extent they believed each individual had done a good job. The average Cronbach’s a across teams was .93. The correspondence of r ¼ .61 between staff and teammate ratings of individuals compares favorably with previous research documenting the average correspondence among supervisor and peer performance ratings (Facteau & Craig, 2001; Furnham & Stringfield, 1998; Harris & Schaubroeck, 1988), and the staff and peer ratings combined to form a composite performance rating with a reliability of Cronbach’s a ¼ .76. Team-Level Outcome Variables It was also necessary to assess the performance of each team as a whole. Hackman (1987) details a normative model of group effectiveness that focuses on the complexity faced by real teams in real organizations. Because objective quantities can rarely measure most real groups’ output, Hackman argues that organization members and clients should provide their own assessments of whether work group output meets or exceeds performance standards. Therefore, in addition to team ratings by staff provided by the same staff who rated individuals – and who had extensive contact with both the team members as well as the teams’ public service clients – participants themselves also gave self-reported ratings covering aspects of their team’s effectiveness. Between one and two weeks before the completion of their year-long job program, all remaining participants completed a short survey
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that included questions based on Hackman’s theory. On a 7-point scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree, team members rated: whether their team accomplished their community service goals (Hackman Criterion 1), and whether generally, in their opinion, the team had done a good job (Member evaluation of team outcome). Hackman (1987) further argues that effective teams have social processes that enhance the interest of members to work together on subsequent tasks, and that they satisfy rather than frustrate personal needs of group members. Therefore, using the same scale, team members rated whether they would want to work together again with the same team (Hackman Criterion 2), whether they had grown personally (Hackman Criterion 3) from their team experience, and their interpersonal cohesion in the form of liking for each member of their team (liking). Hackman’s model encompasses the major components of organizational effectiveness theory, particularly group performance, adaptiveness, and concern for multiple constituents of the team’s work (Jones, 1997). Sixty-one of the 82 participants completing the year-long program (74%) completed these ratings. After excluding two teams as described above, a total of 57 participants from the remaining 14 teams completed the members’ ratings of team outcomes, for an average of 4.1 per team. The average inter-item reliability among these six measures of team effectiveness was r ¼ .26. However, Hackman Criterion 3 had a low average inter-item correlation of r ¼ .07, and upon its removal the average interitem reliability among the remaining five measures was r ¼ .42, for a total reliability of .79 for overall team effectiveness.
Control Variables and Concurrent Validity Participants completed the 60-item version of the NEO-PPI five-factor personality scale (Costa & McCrae, 1992) and provided their age, sex, and ethnicity. In order to argue that TERA is not driven merely by team differences in other attributes, we also present team convergence data on these personality traits and demographic background variables that can be related to accuracy in the communication of emotion (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2003; Hall, 1978; Izard, 1971; Nowicki & Duke, 2001; Rosenthal et al., 1979). In order to establish that the present exercise was valid as a measure of ERA, individual general emotion accuracy (GERA) scores from the exercise were compared with those on the popular and well-validated Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy (DANVA; Nowicki, 2000). The Adult Faces and Adult Paralanguage scales of the DANVA each contain 24 posed
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emotional expressions using photographs of faces and audiotapes of voices, respectively. Each scale takes approximately 5 min to complete. Sixty-three of the 100 individuals on the 14 teams completed the DANVA, for an average of 4.5 members per team (63%). The average scores, 78% (M 18.7 out of 24, SD 3.3) on the Faces scale and 72% (M 17.3 out of 24, SD 2.4) on the Paralanguage scale, were similar to national norms for the instrument (Nowicki, 2000). DANVA scores showed excellent concurrent validity, with a correlation of r ¼ .46 (po.01) with accuracy in the non-teammate section on the video clip exercise assessing GERA. The strength of this correlation provides evidence that the current findings are robust against the potential limitations inherent in using an exercise rather than validated instrument to assess ERA.
RESULTS Operationally, we define TERA for each individual as the average accuracy of emotion judgments of their own teammates’ expressions. By contrast, we define GERA – consistent with past research on individual differences in emotion recognition – as the average accuracy of an individual’s emotion judgments of a common set of expressors. Thus, TERA specifies a specific relationship between the perceiver and target – that of teammates – whereas GERA is defined at the individual level independently of the target, averaged across multiple standardized targets. Table 1 lists correlations among outcome, control, and ERA values. To demonstrate convergence among teammates in their level of TERA, we used the intraclass correlation (ICC) statistic, which conceptually refers to the average correlation consisting of pairs randomly selected within the same teams (Kenny & La Voie, 1985; Kenny, Kashy, & Bolger, 1998). Table 2 presents intraclass correlations for TERA. Consistent with TERA’s status as a team construct, there is positive convergence across teammates for both positive and negative emotion. Consistent with GERA’s status as an individual-level construct, there does not appear to be positive convergence across teammates and, further, convergence is significantly greater for TERA than for GERA. Additional analyses illustrated that the current findings of team-level convergence for TERA are not likely to result from confounding team-level differences in other factors such as personality and demographic variables. There is no evidence for positive convergence along any of the big five personality traits, gender, age, or ethnic background.
Table 1.
M
SD
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
General emotion accuracy (GEA) judging non-teammatesb Amused .156 .111 .23 .01 .29 Happy .160 .084 .10 .07 .14 .04 .12 Afraid .125 .084 .25 .17 .18 Angry .191 .107 .31 .05 Sad .142 .090 .08 .26 Positive .158 .071 .24 .03 .15 Negative .113 .047 .31 .24 .18 Total .155 .054 .35 .12 .20
.19 .05 .17 .15 .09 .18 .10 .13
.04 .27 .28 .02 – .26 –
.11 .25 .11 – .25 –
.16 .03 .27 – –
.21 .36 – –
.09 – –
.35 –
–
Team emotion accuracy (TEA) judging teammatesb Amused .269 .285 .04 .09 .00 Happy .267 .220 .01 .08 .03 Afraid .146 .166 .23 .05 .23 Angry .233 .302 .03 .15 .01 Sad .224 .184 .06 .12 .06 Positive .268 .204 .03 .02 .01 Negative .151 .102 .05 .20 .01 Total .226 .121 .04 .13 .05
.22 .01 .04 .11 .17 .15 .02 .11
.08 .26 .06 .04 .10 .19 .10 .20
.11 .33 .06 .04 .17 .25 .10 .22
.19 .17 .21 .00 .05 .23 .07 .23
.12 .20 .03 .02 .08 .19 .06 .17
.26 .30 .13 .09 .16 .35 .13 .29
.12 .40 .01 .06 .18 .30 .14 .29
.27 .34 .00 .06 .15 .37 .13 .33
Outcome variable Performancea .03
.95
Control variables Female .47 White .44 Age 19.73
.50 .50 2.00
1
.09 .26 .21
2
3
.23 .18
.13
12
13
14
15
16
.26 .44 .04 .06 .19 .42 .16 .38
.29 .12 .23 .22 – .28 –
.03 .03 .30 – .19 –
.16 .23 .07 – –
.10 .18 – –
17
18
19
.30 –
–
.32 – –
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Note: N ¼ 66 for liking, N ¼ 61 for age, N ¼ 68 for all other variables. Correlations not listed between composite measures and underlying variables contributing to the composite. a Performance is a composite variable consisting of the average of standardized staff and peer performance ratings. b All emotion recognition accuracy values are listed in arcsine-transformed unbiased hit rates (Wagner, 1993). po.10. po.05. po.01. po.001.
Team Emotion Recognition Accuracy and Team Performance
Variable
Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations Coefficients for Outcome, Control, and Emotion Recognition Accuracy Values (N ¼ 68).
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Table 2.
Decriptive Statistics and Intraclass Correlations (ICC) for Judgment Accuracy in Recognizing the Emotional Expressions of Teammates and Nonteammates. M
ICC
GERA
t
GERA
TERA
r
Positive Emotion Amused/Embarrassed Happy Total
.269 .267 .268
.156 .160 .158
3.14 4.22 4.67
.07 .04 .08
.31 .06 .29
.25 .02 .22
Negative Emotion Afraid Angry Sad Total
.146 .233 .224 .201
.125 .191 .142 .152
1.01 1.10 3.51 3.11
.01 .11 .10 .11
.10 .21 .08 .15
.09 .31 -.02 .26
Total
.226
.155
5.23
.05
.32
.37
Note: Mean judgment accuracy listed in unbiased hit rates (arcsine transformed). TERA refers to Team Emotion Recognition Accuracy, GERA refers to General Emotion Recognition Accuracy. t refers to the statistical test of the difference between judgment accuracy for TERA and GERA. r refers to the effect size for the test of the difference between ICCs for judgment accuracy for TERA and GERA. po.10. po.05. po.01. po.001. N ¼ 68 individuals, 14 teams.
HILLARY ANGER ELFENBEIN ET AL.
TERA
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107
We predicted that differences in TERA would be predictive of greater team effectiveness. First, for illustrative purposes, Table 3 lists the results of multiple regression analyses predicting workplace performance as a function of control variables and GERA. Because GERA did not show team-level effects, these analyses take place most appropriately at the individual level of analysis (Chan, 1998). Dummy variables account for membership in teams. Consistent with past research on ERA in the workplace, these analyses document a positive association between GERA and workplace accuracy, which is consistent across positive and negative emotions. Table 4 lists correlations among TERA and team-level outcome variables. Because TERA showed significant team-level effects, these analyses most appropriately take place at the team level of analysis (Chan, 1998). In keeping with the process used for team assignment, which was random subject to maximizing diversity within teams, as described above there were no positive intraclass correlations among control variables across the 14 teams. Thus, in order to preserve statistical power, tests of the relationship between team-level workplace outcomes and the ability to communicate emotion present zeroorder correlations and do not include these control variables, as they do not differ meaningfully across teams. In spite of the low statistical power at the team level, these analyses demonstrate a consistent and suggestive trend: greater TERA with positive emotion appears to predict positive outcomes, whereas greater TERA with negative emotion appears to predict negative outcomes. This trend is apparent both when examining coefficients one at a time, as well as in regression models including coefficients for both positive and negative TERA, which yield a number of significant coefficients and model diagnostics. This trend contrasts with the impact of GERA, described above, which was beneficial across types of emotion. Two more focused tests of this post-hoc comparison are also statistically significant. First, there was a significant coefficient for the positive valence effect, the extent to which the team was more accurate in expressing positive rather than negative emotion. This positive valence term was included in linear regression models also controlling for the main effect of total TERA. Second, direct tests of overlapping correlation coefficients (Meng, Rosenthal, & Rubin, 1992) confirmed significant differences between the coefficients for positive and negative emotion.
DISCUSSION This study illustrates the potential value of considering the emotion recognition skill of teams, which is conceptually and empirically separate from the
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Table 3.
Multiple Regression Models Predicting Individual Performance From General Emotion Accuracy in Recognizing the Emotional Expressions of Non-Teammates (N ¼ 68). Baseline Model
Dummy-codes for team
General emotional accuracy F-test of model Degrees of freedom
Type of Emotion
Amused
Happy
Afraid
Angry
Sad
Positive
Negative
Total
Included
Included
Included
Included
Included
Included
Included
Included
Included
.01 .24 .21
.00 .19 .19
.01 .25 .20
.00 .20 .26
.06 .20 .17
.02 .24 .21
.03 .19 .17
.06 .19 .18
1.66 (16, 51)
.19 1.70 (17, 50)
.17 1.71 (17, 50)
.23 1.83 (17, 50)
.34 2.31 (17, 50)
.03 1.54 (17, 50)
.26 1.88 (17, 50)
.29 2.08 (17, 50)
Note: With the exception of model diagnostics, all coefficients listed are standardized bs. po.10. po.05. po.01.
.02 .16 .17 .34 2.25 (17, 50)
HILLARY ANGER ELFENBEIN ET AL.
Control variables Female White Age
Individual Emotions
Correlations Between Team-Level Outcome Variables and Team Emotion Recognition Accuracy Corrected for Response Biasa (N ¼ 14 teams). Positive Emotions
Amused
Outcome Composite Hackman #1: Accomplished goals Hackman #2: Work together again Average liking among teammates Member evaluation of team outcome Staff performance rating a
Negative Emotions
Happy
Overall Positive
Afraid
Angry
.49
.07
.33
.27
.25
.09
.26
.44
.38
.48
.48
.07
.33
.32
.05
.22
.07
.39
.01
.19
.11
.14
.66
.43
.02
.26
.14
.00
.17
.10
.44
.26
.53
Sad
Total Accuracy Overall Negative
Regression Model with Positive and Negative Emotion Accuracyb
Difference by Valence
Overall Positive
Overall Negative
F-Test
Adjusted R2
Positive Valence Effectc
Test of Larger Positive Coefficientsd
.11
.68
.64
3.56
28.3%
.66
2.07
.05
.09
.74
.47
3.41
27.1%
.59
1.60
.22
.41
.05
.65
.77
4.64
35.9%
.72
2.22
.37
.54
.26
.59
.86
6.10
43.9%
.78
2.34
.08
.20
.31
.53
.49
1.68
9.5%
.51
1.95
.19
.17
.11
.28
.32
.50
8.4%
.36
.94
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Response bias correction based on Wagner (1993). Multiple regression model predicting the outcome variable from the total positive and negative emotion accuracy values. F-test degrees of freedom (2, 11). c Positive valence effect is the extent to which the team was more accurate in expressing positive rather than negative emotion. Values listed in this column are standardized linear regression coefficients from a model also controlling for the main effect of total team emotion recognition accuracy. d Values are Z coefficients testing the extent to which accuracy with positive emotion was a more positive predictor of outcomes than accuracy with negative emotion (Meng, Rosenthal, & Rubin, 1992). po.10; two-tailed test. po.05; two-tailed test. po.01; two-tailed test. b
Team Emotion Recognition Accuracy and Team Performance
Table 4.
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aggregation of emotion recognition among the individuals who comprise the teams. The emergence of TERA, defined as the ability of individuals to understand their teammates’ emotions, was supported by data from a field study of intact teams. Taken together, positive and negative TERA accounted for 28.1% of the variance in team performance nearly a year later. By contrast, the GERA of these teams, akin to the group-level average of standardized emotion recognition skill examined in previous research, did not have the properties of a team-level construct. Thus, the study suggests that TERA is more than the sum of its parts. These findings provide support for an interpersonal perspective on the role of emotion communication in teams, beyond the exclusively individual-level focus driven largely by its early roots in the personality literature as well as the more recent interest in the umbrella concept of individual ‘‘emotional intelligence’’ (e.g., Goleman, 1995; Mayer et al., 2001; Rosenthal et al., 1979). The communication of emotion is an inherently social phenomenon, and the interactants are not simply interchangeable; we neither express emotion into a vacuum nor do we receive emotional messages from a vacuum. Thus, it is worthwhile to examine the communication of emotion beyond the simple aggregation of individual differences. The current study also represents a methodological advance for research within organizational settings of communication via affective displays. In contrast with prior work on the recognition of context-free posed expressions, the present study used a well-validated protocol for emotion induction to elicit ecologically valid samples of emotional behaviors based on real events from past organizational settings. Constraints on the expression of emotion in organizational life make such communication subtle and complicated, guided by display rules (e.g., Ashforth & Humphrey, 1995; Fineman, 1993; Hochschild, 1983; Martin, Knopoff, & Beckman, 1998; Rafaeli & Sutton, 1989; Sutton, 1991; Van Maanen & Kunda, 1989), and the current study aimed to capture more of this subtlety and complexity. Further, such exercises elicited affective stimuli from expressors in participants’ actual workplace, rather than sampling from university students as in standardized tests.
Antecedents of Team Emotional Accuracy After spending one week in team orientation, and not having begun in earnest their tasks together, randomly assigned work groups already varied significantly in the extent to which members could understand each other’s emotional expressions. What might have happened in team assignment or during that first week to explain these systematic differences?
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Although the current study was designed to document these team differences rather than to posit and test a mechanism for them, prior research provides a foundation to speculate about their likely causes. First, some differences may have been present at the time of team formation, given that unacquainted pairs can vary idiosyncratically in the extent to which they can understand each other’s emotional expressions. Second, across the weeklong team orientation, workgroups may have differed in the extent to which team members grew acquainted and familiar with each other’s idiosyncratic styles. Group norms can emerge early in the life of teams (Flynn & Chatman, 2003), and teams may develop norms within even their first few minutes regarding the extent to which individuals share personal information (Polzer et al., 2002). Likewise, we argue that similar norms could quickly determine the extent to which members attend to, provide feedback regarding – and consequently learn about – each other’s emotional states. In our study, employees were significantly more accurate recognizing the emotional expressions of their own teammates than the expressions of members of other teams. Further, this accuracy at judging one’s own teammates varied meaningfully across the teams tested – whereas accuracy with nonteammates did not. These findings, taken together, appear to support a learning perspective on emotion recognition, in which individuals in some teams developed greater learning about each other’s emotional styles than those in other teams. We speculate that teams high in team emotional accuracy may have shared more examples of their expressive style with each other, for example, due to greater time spent together, or due to deeper emotional exchanges during this time. Alternately, given that feedback about emotional expressions increases recognition accuracy (Elfenbein, 2006; Feldman, Philippot, & Custrini, 1992; Gillis, Bernieri, & Wooten, 1995), teams high in TERA may have been more explicit about their emotional states and thus provided more feedback that served to enhance learning. Further, members of some teams may have identified more closely with the team, and there is evidence that emotion recognition is more accurate when judging those with whom one identifies closely (Thibault, Bourgeois, & Hess, 2006).
Team Emotion Recognition Accuracy and Negative Emotion One striking and unexpected finding in the study was that TERA for negative emotion predicted significantly lower task performance. The social functional perspective grounding this research emphasizes the adaptiveness
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of understanding other’s internal states as a source of valuable information and feedback that can be used in order to adjust one’s behavior to be more appropriate for smooth interpersonal interactions. Why, then, would teams that achieve high accuracy in understanding each other’s negative emotions actually under-perform those teams that have less of this mutual understanding? This result did not appear to stem from differences in the composition of the teams. Consistent with the teams’ random assignment, teams also did not vary systematically from each other in the extent of members’ levels of dispositional positive or negative affect, degree of self-monitoring, or their personality characteristics. Further, the first hypothesis of the study confirmed that the teams did not differ in the extent to which individual members were generally sensitive and accurate at understanding the emotions of others. Further, the results did not stem from response bias – whereby members of some teams would have simply endorsed positive choices more frequently, thus appearing to be more accurate – due to the signal detection methods used in the scoring, which control for the impact of such bias. It did not appear that good teams simply ignored the negative stimuli in their environment, given that Table 1 lists a positive correlation of r ¼ .30 (po.02) between accuracy at judging the positive and negative emotions of teammates. This indicates that teams more accurate with negative emotion were also more accurate with positive emotion, which is inconsistent with a response and attention bias explanation. Instead, given the positive correlation between TERA with positive and negative emotion, as well as the negative impact of negative TERA on performance and the trend of a positive impact of positive TERA on performance, it appears that this effect was driven by the non-overlapping variance. That is, those teams were poor performers who – controlling for their overall skill – were particularly diagnostic at understanding negative emotion rather than positive. Why might this be the case? Through a process of emotional contagion (e.g., Barsade, 2002; Hatfield et al., 1994), understanding greater negativity from one’s colleagues may have invited reciprocity and thereby served to spread negative emotion throughout the team. The general benefits of positive affect in organizational settings, and deleterious consequences of negative affect, have been well established (e.g., Isen & Baron, 1991; Staw & Barsade, 1993; Staw et al., 1994). It may be that, in this particular team environment, negative emotion did not provide valuable information that others could use to adjust their workplace behaviors. According to the social functionalist perspective, what matters is not just the perception of an emotion, but most importantly what people do with the information once
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they have perceived it. In this particular participant organization, jobs were highly structured, and teams operated within a larger structure characterized by command-and-control from senior staff members running a government program. The participants themselves were young adults generally in their first job. This suggests that the teams may not have had the skills, autonomy, and flexibility to change their behavior based on colleagues’ negative moods, and so such information may have served only as an aversive backdrop to the team’s work. Future research should test this moderator speculated to account for the negative finding – the degree of usability of the information that is gained by understanding the emotions of others.
Study Applicability and Limitations Further work is necessary to develop a theory of emotional skills in teams, and additional empirical work is necessary to replicate and extend the current findings. In addition to exploring the antecedents and consequences outlined above, future work should seek to determine the boundary conditions of TERA. The current study took place within a single organization, which limits its generality. The participant organization was ideal in terms of random assignment of previously unacquainted individuals into teams, but represented a somewhat atypical workplace. Public service work is an environment where emotional skills may be particularly important and overburdened. However, the organization does represent a large and growing area within the United States, consisting of highly structured servicesector type employment undertaken by a relatively young and diverse workforce. The current study also does not provide a picture of how TERA might change over time. Given the inherently dynamic nature of communication and emotion, we can expect that TERA may evolve as team members become more closely acquainted with each other. The present study has important limitations that future work would help to address. Most notably, in order to elicit naturalistic emotional expressions, the protocol made use of a well-validated procedure for the guided recall of emotion. However, there may have been individual differences in participant response to this procedure, and consequently some differences between participants’ actual workplace emotional expressions versus their enactment during the emotion interview. Even so, the lack of significant variation across teams along other individual difference variables suggests that such a factor would be unlikely to account for the current results. It would be valuable to
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design future research to observe the accuracy of understanding emotions in the workplace in real-time, using spontaneously occurring emotional expressions. Further, future research may separate out the full-channel displays that simultaneously include facial expressions, paralinguistic cues, body movement, and implicit verbal content in order to help determine which cues were the most influential for participant judgments.
CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS Emotional sensitivity has long been viewed in the research literature as an individual intelligence or stable personality trait, which is consistent across interaction partners. This study supported, instead, a perspective on emotional skill that may be fruitfully conceptualized beyond the individual level. Past research demonstrated that work groups could meaningfully share emotional states. The current results show that teams can meaningfully share the ability to perceive each other’s emotional states – and this ability appears to be more than a mere aggregation of individual differences in general skill. Future research has much to gain by seeing the effectiveness of emotional skill as a property of teams. As current trends continue towards increasing teamwork and interdependence, the need for teams to improve the quality of their coordination is likely to become more critical. TERA may be one of the skills necessary for such coordination. Managers may wish to consider interpersonal dynamics early in the life of teams, and to include exercises and activities designed to enhance the mutual understanding of emotional states.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank Teresa Amabile, Robin Ely, and Charles O’Reilly for their detailed comments and support. We are indebted to David Kenny for his statistical advice. Additionally, we are grateful for advice and assistance from Amy Edmondson, Dan Elfenbein, Eena Khalil, Sei Jin Ko, Eric Lauer, Debi La Plante, Ying Liu, Steve Nowicki, and Justin Saif. Preparation of this article was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Student Fellowship and a Harvard Business School dissertation research grant.
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CHAPTER 5 LEVERAGING EMOTIONS IN VALUE MANAGEMENT OF BRANDS AND PRODUCTS Leslie J. Harrington ABSTRACT In a world where companies create multiple brand and product features and use technology to continuously improve the appeal and delivery of their offering, a perception that high tech characteristics are sufficient to attract customers and build loyalty for the company is a common misconception. In reality, the emotional aspects of the customer–brand/ product bond are critical and must be factored into strategic decisions. Holbrook and Batra (1987a) suggest that consumers seek emotional value and benefit from brand/product and that these emotional ties may exceed the value derived from technology. While research turns attention to investigate emotions within this brand/product relationship, questions arise regarding possible levers that can be engaged to trigger this emotional relationship. In an effort to understand this complex issue, a review of literature on emotions and strategy, framed, as value management will be discussed and the role that emotions play in the customer–brand/ product bond will be addressed. In addition, this discussion moves to understand which design element can possibly meet this challenge. Is it possible that color and its established link to emotions could prove strong enough to be a strategic lever? Functionality, Intentionality and Morality Research on Emotion in Organizations, Volume 3, 121–140 Copyright r 2007 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1746-9791/doi:10.1016/S1746-9791(07)03005-2
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In a world where companies create multiple brand and product features and use technology to continuously improve the appeal and delivery of their offering, a perception that high tech characteristics are sufficient to attract customers and build loyalty for the company is a common misconception. In reality, the emotional aspects of the customer–brand/product bond are critical and must be factored into strategic decisions. Holbrook and Batra (1987a) suggest that consumers seek emotional value and benefit from brand/product and that these emotional ties may exceed the value derived from technology. While research turns attention to investigate emotions within this brand/product relationship, questions arise regarding possible levers that can be engaged to trigger this emotional relationship. In an effort to understand this question, a review of literature on emotions and strategy, framed, as value management will be discussed.
VALUE MANAGEMENT A new voice is emerging from those who study strategy suggesting that rational paradigms of the kind underlying strategic planning usually break down when faced with conditions of unpredictability and instability (Senge, 1990; Stacey, 1995). In such circumstances, argue these authors, the typical rational or linear strategy approach (Firat, 1985; Shrivastava, 1986; Venkatesh, 1985) may no longer be appropriate, and instead may lead to company failure (Barr, Stimpert, & Huff, 1992). The call to acknowledge the limitations of the rational strategic approach is not totally new and has been advocated by reputable researchers such as Bourgeois (1984), Ginsberg (1984), and Jemison (1981). However, it has only been recently that managers facing new levels of complexity have significantly challenged the linear-rational strategy model. Complexity is now receiving significant attention from strategists and the academic literature related to strategy (Nutt, 1998; Parker & Stacey, 1994; Senge, 1990; Stacey, 1991, 2000; Stacey, 1995). Senge’s (1990) work centers on differentiating between types of complexity. He claims that the prevailing strategic paradigm is designed to address detailed complexity that requires managers to attend to multiple details while assuming these details are constant and non-changing. Stacey (1995) asserts that strategizing under conditions of dynamic complexity, cannot be done using the rational approach, since the cause and effect relationships underlying the strategic planning paradigm, are subtle and non-linear. Employing a rational approach to strategy under such conditions is likely to result in ineffectiveness and failure
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(Fredrickson & Mitchell, 1984). Stacey (1995) argues that organizations are likely to produce endless complexity, due to numerous intra- and interorganizational interactions thus rendering rational-linear strategic planning irrelevant, and potentially dangerous in its limiting and illusionary value. Complexity clearly challenges some basic assumptions currently asserted by the rational-linear strategic paradigm. These assumptions include an existence of order where cause and effect can be discovered, predicted, and validated; existence of unbiased rational choice where individual interpretations have little impact, and existence of intent, which states that decision-makers act deliberately and thoughtfully rather than intuitively as offered by Stacey (1995). The question though is what substitute for the popular linear strategic view?
Strategy as Value Management In recent years, the discussion of value proposition, value creation, and value appropriation seem to have taken center stage in conversations on strategy where the rational paradigm is challenged. If companies engage in value management they can gain a competitive advantage, the type of advantage that is sustainable, and at the same time is difficult to imitate and non-substitutable, making it all the more valuable and rare (Grant, 1991). Competitive advantage is anchored in superior value driven from the company’s unique ability to configure and reconfigure its capabilities and assets to best address customer needs (Fahy & Smithee, 1999; Han, Kim, & Srivastava, 1998). Day and Wensley (1988) and Mizik and Jacobson (2003) discuss value in terms of two sets of activities. Adding value focuses on the customer, where value is added in terms of producing and delivering products to the market at one end of a continuum to building customer loyalty through continually meeting and exceeding consumers expectations at the other end. Extracting value focuses on the company with the intent to appropriate value back to the company through profits at one end to the value extracting continuum moving towards the building of reputation at the other end. Providing a general definition of value proves fairly tricky as many use the term with great liberty (Leszinski & Marn, 1997). Khalifa (2004) in an attempt to instill conceptual order, categorizes value in three main categories of shareholder value, stakeholder value and customer value. Within this conceptualization, Khalifa (2004) defines shareholder value following the finance literature developed by economists such as (Thurow, 1997)
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Furthermore, Khalifa views stakeholder value along the lines promoted by stakeholder theorists, such as Kaplan and Norton’s (1996) Balanced Scorecard and lastly she regards customer value in terms similar to those advanced by marketers such as Zeithaml (1988). Of these three value-adding target audiences, Khalifa (2004) suggests that customer value serves as the source for the other two, a claim supported by others (Heskett, Jones, Loveman, Sasser, & Schlesinger, 1994; Hekkert, 2001; Woodruff, 1997). Similarly, Woodruff (1997) offers: We’re witnessing a tremendous transformation in organizations. Driven by more demanding customers, global competition and slow growth economies and industries, many are on the journey searching for new ways to achieve and retain competitive advantage y (but) instead of the same (traditional) focus y there are no shortage of calls for organizations to reorient strategy toward superior customer value delivery y The issue does not seem to be whether an organization should compete on customer value delivery, but rather how it should do it. (pp. 139–140)
Strategic propositions make explicit the dynamic balance achieved between adding value and extracting value activities, a point that unites customer, stakeholder, and shareholder value in various proportions and combinations. We first turn to examine how value is added to customers.
Dynamics of Value Adding What is currently known about creating value for customers? Many have acknowledged the difficulty of defining customer-value since value is likely to be subjective and dynamic in its evolution over time (Jaworski & Kohli, 1993; Piercy & Morgan, 1997). Woodruff (1997) concludes that the current value literature is inconsistent. For example, some researchers take an organizational level of analysis by examining customer value that quantifies the monetary worth of customers to the organization. Here the notion of customer value is more about the value the customer can bring to the company, rather than the value that a customer can expect to obtain from a relationship with the company. Zeithaml (1988) suggests that ‘‘value is the customer’s overall evaluation of perceived product utility compared to cost’’ (p. 14). Gale (1994), on the other hand, offers that customer value is indeed a cost/benefit analysis as benchmarked against what the market perceives as appropriate. Yet, Butz and Goldstein (1996) note ‘‘by customer value we mean the emotional bond established between a customer and a producer after the customer has used a salient product or service produced by that supplier’’ (p. 63). Stahl, Barnes, Parr and Woodruff (1999) offer that
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‘‘customer value is the customers’ perception of what they want to have happened in a specific-use situation with the help of a product or service offering in order to accomplish a desired purpose of goal’’ (p. 53). Finally, an additional voice is presented by Anderson, Jain, and Chintagunta (1993) who view value as ‘‘the perceived worth in monetary units of the set of economic technical service and social benefits perceived by a consumer in exchange for the price paid for the product, taking into account the available suppliers’ offerings and prices’’ (p. 5). In all, these definitions are interesting in that they present multiple perspectives on the notion of customer value, as well as offer room for creative interpretation. (Holbrook & Batra, 1987a; Sheth, Newman, & Gross, 1991). It is important to examine the value-to-customer issue from the customer’s subjective perspective. Wansink (2003) details a compelling argument which discusses laddering techniques that allow one to move from declared intentions of buyers to reasons behind buying decisions. Consumers, Wansink (2003) argues, are often unaware of the motives behind their purchasing behavior. To get to the root of their behavior, he envisions a dialog where a consumer is asked why he/she purchased a specific product. Typically, the consumer comments on product features as reasons for attraction. Such reasons might include the fact that this car offers a cup-holder for every passenger. Further questioning of consumers about these features importance leads to laddering, where the consumer moves from the feature to the actual benefit, such as it prevents children’s fights in the backseat and makes the driving more enjoyable. If daring to probe further and asking why is this important, simple statements such as ‘‘It makes me happy’’ tend to emerge. Wansink (2003) borrows from Huber, Herrman, and Morgan (2001) who propose that all buying behaviors occur within a mental–emotional schemata that starts at product features, moves to cognitive and emotional consequences, and ends at value and/or need satisfaction. A Means–Ends Model as classified by Khalifa (2004) is prevalent in consumer behavior theory and is based on the assumption that customers acquire products as means to satisfy favorable ends. Value can be personal, subjective, cognitive, or emotional. Along these lines, products are purchased to elicit emotions that best adhere to personal values (Young & Feigin, 1975) such as ‘‘I deserve to be happy’’ and/or needs expressed by statements such as ‘‘I need to have this to do my job better.’’ Wansink (2003) claims further that these core values are universal and numbered, and in general they highly correspond to Maslow’s (1954) higher level needs of self-esteem and self-actualization.
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This approach provides insight into the meaning of value to the customer. It allows for a more refined view where value can be placed both as the link between brand/product features and consequences, as well as between consequences and personal values. Moreover, it emphasizes, and to a degree explains, the emotional and overall psychological attachment of buyers to their purchases. ‘‘I am a MacTM user’’ no longer sounds weird given the emotional context in which such a relationship is nested. As offered by de Cheratony, Harris, and Dall’Olmo-Riley (2000), a brand that satisfies customers’ practical needs will deliver functional value, whereas a brand that caters to customers’ self expression needs will deliver a symbolic halo-like value.
Dynamics of Extracting Value For purposes of this paper, value extraction for the company is the benefit gained through adding value for the customer. It is insufficient just to add value, but the reciprocating nature of adding and extracting needs to be in managed. This is a concept that may not be easily understood, and which enjoys less attention in the literature than its complementing adding-value ‘partner’. Here one can expect multiple perspectives ranging from financial statements, to knowledge management, to brand enhancement, all of which will suit the generic strategy framework of cost-leadership and differentiation offered by Porter (1985, 1991). Such generic strategies presuppose the availability of company resources, which may or may not be limiting by their ability to execute strategic choice, from their pool of either tangible resources of finances and technologies or intangible resources of knowledge, brand, and reputation. Value extraction, as discussed here, is about refilling the resource pool with critical resources that matter to company’s survival. However in today’s competitive environment, it is not enough to just have resources that matter, they also need to be difficult to replicate or imitate by competitors, to build competitive advantage that is sustainable.
Value to Company–Brand/Product Management Brand/product management has long been at the top of senior management agenda. The attention given to this topic is clear and obvious when factoring in the need to differentiate, attract, and retain customers in turbulent and complex business environments. The results are rewarding to those who
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succeed. Researchers show that brand loyalty is clearly tied to financial measures, where customer retention is linked to a company’s increase in net present value profits (Reichheld & Sasser, 1990). Reichheld and Sasser (1990) also report that Xerox, discovered that loyal customers are six times more likely to purchase additional products or services, which they connect directly to performance. Along similar lines, Hall (1993) inquired into companies’ reputational assets vis-a`-vis their ability to build competitive advantage, depicting the direct effect of company’s self image on performance results. Stahl et al. (1999) discuss the net present value of customers (NPVC) as a measurement reflecting revenues associated with customers minus expenses needed to serve these customers, suggesting that high NPVC is directly related to repeat business and customer loyalty. This advocates that the value for brands is reputational first and financial second. Reputation attracts and sustains the inflow of financial resources from loyal customers and in turn gets reinforced with repeated business. Looking at this from a differentiation viewpoint suggests that brand recognition is the key (Aaker, 1996; Keller, 1996). Brand/product recognition, has been thought of as the extent to which a product/brand is recognized for its attributes (Lindstrom, 2003). Brand recognition becomes important as it allows consumers quick evaluate decision-making capabilities. Consider Coca Cola, Target, or UPS from a brand perspective, and iPod and VW from a product perspective. Within their respective categories these companies make a constant effort to be recognized using images, shapes, colors, logos, and a variety of other design levers to communicate with their customer (Lindstrom, 2003). Actual visual value allows for the creation of a differentiation point, which becomes inseparable from the brand. Such quality coupled with the right brandcepts (Woods, 2004) compete to create the marketing halo effect described by Ross-Wooldridge, Brown, & Minsky (2004), and frames the brand/product in the mind of the consumer. According to Moss (2001), it is assumed that consumers will relate to products/brands that offer more than a simple set of features in order to identify with grander benefits including emotional, symbolic, self-expressive values, and/or benefits. Thus, adding product or brand differentiation value allows the consumer to develop solutions to meet personal needs, which build loyalty. Concurrently, extracting value takes on the shape of reputational gains and differentiation, as related to both product or brand image and quality. But what is adding and extracting value contingent on? What assumptions do we make about the way consumer interface with brands and
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products? And what is the role that emotions play in forming ad solidifying value management?
Linking Emotions and Product/Brand Performance It is worthwhile to briefly introduce the C–A–B paradigm (Holbrook & Batra, 1987a) in which many psychology and marketing studies are anchored. The C–A–B paradigm attempts to systematically explain buyer behavior explaining the link between emotions and expected performance results that products and brands pursue. According to this paradigm Cognition (C) determines Affect (A), which in turn determines Behavior (B). Over the years, the research in support of this paradigm suggests multiple variations of relationships between cognition, affect, and behavior. Varied combinations have emerged to also include both normative values that influence cognitions and involvement state that influence affect. In most accounts however Affect was thought of as preceding behavior (Holbrook & Batra, 1987b). Thus it can be proposed that emotions are key to impacting consumer behavior. One must go through emotion meeting the consumer’s heart, while accepting that triggering cognition alone is insufficient. The question for brand and product managers then becomes, what levers are most efficacious in triggering and engaging the emotion facet of the relationship with consumers. There are more and more examples of companies’ attempt to engage in their dialog. Of note is the recently launched Coke-Cola campaign ‘‘Happiness in a Bottle’’ where Esther Lee, chief creative officer, marketing, strategy, and innovation of Coca-Cola explained how a massive research project conducted revealed that ‘‘consumers had a deep-down love for the brand, but it wasn’t as top of mind. They also learned that what loyal Coke drinkers love most about the brand was the physical and emotional uplift they got when drinking the product’’ (MacArthur, 2006, p. 1). This example clearly links the emotionality associated with brands and the brand’s ability to add value to promote loyalty, and as a result extract value – value that Coke hopes will turn the declining market for carbonated beverages around.
Emotions: Zooming in on the Affect within the C–A–B Paradigm The study of emotions is no simple task. It can be traced back to the work of Descartes in the 1600s when he defined six primary ‘‘passions’’ (the term
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for emotions at the time): love, hate, desire, joy, sadness, and admiration (Taylor, 2000). More recent works of Tomkins (1962), Izard (1977), Frijda (1986), Elkman (1992), and Plutchik (2003) all identify and/or offer different typologies of emotions, making it difficult for researchers to establish construct clarity. While the term emotion is still regarded as problematic because it enjoys multiple conceptualizations, in general, the literature on this subject is divided into two broad schools: one where emotions are anchored in dimensions and the other where emotions are considered discrete categories (Lazarus, 1991; Plutchik, 2003). However, despite the divergence, Plutchik (2003) rightfully pointed to emergent consensus regarding the notions that emotions are usually triggered by ones interpretations of events. Emotions involve strong reactions of many bodily systems. They communicate information from one person to another and they help the individual adapt to changing environmental situations. Plutchik also posits that there are two main emotional dimensions: positive–negative and primary–secondary. Fredrickson (2000) compares positive and negative emotions, outlining that positive emotions impact people’s ability to: generate creative thought, develop relationships with others, and garner overall higher levels of performance and survivability. Moreover, she proposes that positive emotions have the ability to overturn the results generated by negative emotions (Fredrickson, 2003).
Role of Emotions in the Product/Brand Value Proposition The voice of the literature on the topic of emotions’ role within product and/ or brand management is decisive and persuasive. For example, Taylor (2000) suggests that ‘‘understanding consumer emotions y can be of help to marketers, the management of emotions y (and it) can also be applied to corporate strategy’’ (p. 149). Mahajan and Wind (2002) caution ‘‘if you’re not using emotions to position your products and services y you’re missing a tremendous opportunity’’ (p. 38). Many product offerings may require a combination of both cognition and affect (Chaudhuri, 1999; Holbrook & Batra, 1987a; Mahajan & Wind, 2002), where cognition deals with the mind of the consumer, and affect ‘‘goes straight to the heart’’ (Mahajan & Wind, 2002, p. 38). A focus on feelings, emotions, and desires towards a brand/product, has the potential for powerful intervention, as it can create an internal reality within the consumer which is difficult to reason with once generated
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(Robinette, Brand, & Lenz, 2000) and even more difficult to challenge by competitors. ‘‘It is the affective, rather than the cognitive story of your offerings that will win customers’ hearts (and minds), and this is what companies need to create, manage and harvest to build emotional brand loyalty’’ (Mahajan & Wind, 2002, p. 41). This notion of affective stories is regarded as key to connecting with individuals, as supported by Pink (2005) who suggested that through stories humans have effectively communicated over centuries, not because of their content or cognitive components. It is the affective value of stories that allow for connecting to occur. In developing the thinking regarding emotions within the context of brand-bond, it is important to consider and validate the appropriate typology(ies) that best serve to explain the phenomenon of customer–product/ brand bond. Nonetheless, as the research cited here shows, the importance of emotions to the product/brand–customer relationships is clear. So what can companies do to make their brands/products emotionally relevant to consumers so that value will be added and later extracted to maintain the firm’s viability? Differentiation is one of the three generic strategies that Porter (1980) describes as ‘‘the business of concentrating on achieving superior performance in an important customer benefit area valued by a large part of the market. The company cultivates those strengths that will contribute to the intended differentiation’’ (p. 56). Aaker (1996) suggested that in order to differentiate a company should focus on building brand equity in five categories of brand assets: brand loyalty, brand awareness, perceived quality, brand associations, and proprietary assets such as patents, trademarks, and channel relationships. The most important component to build brand equity is brand identity, which consists of a set of brand associations that communicate a promises to customers of what the brand will deliver (Aaker, 1996). Differentiation occurs when one or more of the five elements is leveraged and later recognized by target audiences. The Brand Resonance Pyramid (Kotler & Keller, 2006) offers the notion that product/brand building can have either an rational or emotional route, as shown in Table 1. These differentiation frameworks provide an initial look into the question of whether emotions can be leveraged to add and extract value. Clearly these theories posit that emotions either in identity or in laddering underpin the customer–brand/product bond. This issue is examined in more detail next.
Brand Resonance Pyramid (Kotler & Keller, 2006).
4. Relationships
Intense, active loyalty
What about you and me? RESONANCE
FEELINGS
Positive, accessible reactions
IMAGERY
Strong, favorable & unique brand associations
3. Response What about you?
JUDGEMENT
2. Meaning What are you?
1. Identity Who are you? RATIONAL ROUTE
PERFORMANCE
SALIENCE
Deep, broad brand awareness
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EMOTIONAL ROUTE
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Impacting Emotions through the Color Lever The literature on design provides an additional insight into emotion management offering that design and emotions are closely linked (Cupchik, 2004; Hummels, 1999; Suri, 2004; Zuo, Hope, Jones, & Castle, 2004). Researchers in this area presuppose that good design can create a context for experiencing emotions. This literature is less clear on which combination of design elements: shape, line, form, color, and texture, are capable of triggering this emotional relationship. Of the five aforementioned design elements, color seems to enjoy the longest and greatest level of investigation in concert with emotions. Color is used to describe emotion and mood: feeling blue, green with envy or in a red rage. Color is a powerful and meaningful part of the human experience. Walker (1991) suggests that ‘‘color accounts for 60% of the acceptance or rejection of an object and is a critical factor in the success of any visual experience’’ (p. 33). This statement might surprise or even shock some, but upon further consideration, it may not seem so overstated considering the extent to which color penetrates almost every facet of life (Birren, 1978). Within business, companies seem to be awakening to the potential of color (Walker, 1991). The success of a few companies’ products, such as Apple’s iPod introduced in January 2004 in five metallic colors, Volkswagen’s bright green VW Beetle introduced in 1998, and Heinz Co. stellar blue ketchup in 2003, have sparked the attention and imaginations of brand managers and product designers. The struggle to complete in a more complex business environment compels companies to probe and comprehend new feasible opportunities to employ color which may enhance the value of their products and brands, all in the hope of following the success of others. This helps to explain why color has come to be seen as a critical component to a company’s strategy with regards to product offering or brand message (Fehrman & Fehrman, 2004). The notion of color and its impact is a strongly held paradigm anchored in the art and science literature (Gage, 1999). Within the product and brand realms of business, it is becoming more common to see many products offered in multiple colors, allowing consumers to select the color that resonates with them. In many cases, consumers are oblivious to the importance of color in a buying decision, or even the way in which companies use color to attract their attention. Asking consumers to explain the reasoning behind specific color selections usually results in responses of ‘‘I like it.’’ A growing number of companies are beginning to recognize that color can be more than an issue of like and dislike, or even customer preferences. Color can
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be used to trigger emotions, thoughts and feelings (Desmet, 2004), as a way to connect with the customer (Pullman & Gross, 2004). While these companies recognize the importance of color and the role I can play in communicating and connecting with consumers, there seems to be a gap in knowledge required to make effective color–emotion decisions. As a result, companies are forced to make the best educated guess they can base on historical performance or professional experience. The color–emotion literature points to strong support for the affective color relationship that is composed of both positive and negative emotions. The key to understanding and leveraging this side of color is to know how to activate the positive emotional connections and mitigate the negative ones. Imbedded in this statement is the notion that color selection should consciously address the implied emotional message a color can deliver to customers when linked with products and brands.
Color as Loyalty Supporting Adding Value While there is no empirical evidence to support the notion of color having the ability to build loyalty, there is a strong body of literature that strives to make sense of the relationship between emotions and loyalty. ‘‘Marketers have long pursued share of market and advertisers share of mind, with more recent studies emphasize the importance of share of heart’’ (Day, 1989, p. 5). Share of heart is defined as the emotional relationship between consumers and a particular product, brand, retailer, or service provider (Day, 1989). On the other hand, market share is the sum of both repeat and new buyers, both of which may be attracted by promotions and/or incentives, which fails to build brand loyalty or an emotional bond (Schultz & Robinson, 1986). Day (1989) suggested that loyalty represents consistent behavior, which should be differentiated from product commitment. Product commitment represents the nature and strength of the emotional bond a consumer has with a product or brand, which aligns more with the notion of share of heart than share of mind. This notion is further supported and suggests that life long loyalty can be built leveraging the emotional component of human interactions (Robinette et al., 2000). Emotional marketing is neither quick nor easy to employ, but the results are measured in loyal customers who spend more and remain with a company far longer. Emotional marketing is based on the premise that loyalty leads to profits. The key to building such loyalty is anchored in the company’s ability to create a desired emotional bond with the customer (Robinette et al., 2000).
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Customer value requires five components: equity, experience, and energy which represent the emotional side of the equation, as well as product and money which represent the rational side of the equation. The emotional side provides the largest opportunity for differentiation. However, the emotional side of the equation can not make up for a poor product or price (Robinette et al., 2000). A discrepancy occurs when marketers focus on product attributes, while consumers concern themselves more with intangible benefits (Day, 1989, p. 11) or the emotional side of the equation. Early studies in this field show that there is a direct relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty (Anderson & Sullivan, 1993; Taylor & Baker, 1994). Customer satisfaction is defined as the ‘‘relative concept that involves both cognitive and affective components, is consumer related (rather than product related), mainly transactional and incorporating the appraisal of both benefits and sacrifices’’ (Yu & Dean, 2001, p. 235). This involves both cognitive and emotional components, where cognitive refers to performance evaluation compared to expected standard, and emotional encompasses various emotions related to the product/brand (Liljander & Strandvik, 1997). Yu and Dean (2001) found that while there was a strong correlation between both cognitive and emotional components, ‘‘there is a higher correlation between overall customer satisfaction and the emotional component than the cognitive component, as to0.01 significance level’’ (p. 244). In addition, they found that positive emotions, as opposed to negative emotions, are associated with all dimensions of loyalty except complaining behavior (Yu & Dean, 2001). The dimensions of loyalty defined were: positive word of mouth, switching behavior, willingness to pay more, and complaining behavior. Building on the concept of loyalty, Bloemer and Kasper (1995) put forth the notion that loyalty is comprised of a non-random, behavioral response which results from evaluation processes that result in commitment. However Zeithaml et al. (1996) points out that loyalty is a multi-dimensional construct and includes both positive and negative responses. Yet another area of this literature explores design experience. Specifically, Pullman and Gross (2004) look for the connection between experience design and its ability to elicit emotions in relationship to loyalty.
VALUE THROUGH COLOR There exists an implicit assumption that color, as a phenomenon, is powerful enough to serve as a source of influence (Birren, 1978; Engelbrecht,
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2003; Kwallek, Lewis, & Robbins, 1988; Mahnke & Mahnke, 1993; Pressey, 1921). At this point in the discussion an assumption is made that color is capable of impacting both the customer and the product/brand value by adding and extracting value for the company. Let us examine this proposition further.
Color Affect Research on color and emotion anchored in the color preferences literature began as early as the late 1800s (Fehrman & Fehrman, 2004). Researchers at that time thought that emotional connections to colors could be one way of understanding why individuals would prefer one color over another. Early studies centered on determining exact color emotion connections using a defined color set. For example red, yellow, blue, green, and a defined emotion set, for example anger, joy, happy, sad. Studies varied greatly in the size of their study sets ranging any where from 6 to 48 emotions in a set. More recent studies (Hogg, Goodman, Porter, Mikellides, & Preddy, 1969; Kobayashi, 1981; Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957; Spearman, 1904; Wright & Rainwater, 1962) have tried to reduce large numbers of color–emotions scales to a smaller group to make it easier to compare across studies. Osgood et al.’s (1957) seminal work used a semantic differential method to build on the very early work of Spearman’s (1904) factor analysis. Spearman’s work identified the three primary factors: evaluative, potency, and activity by which color–emotions could be classified. This work paved the way for many others, including Wright and Rainwater’s (1962) work which outlined a 48 color–emotions scales, Hogg et al.’s (1969) component analysis of semantic differential on 12 color–emotion scales and Kobayashi’s (1981) color image scale study. For the most part, all of the above-mentioned researchers developed similar sets of dimensions, suggesting that universal color–emotions factors may exist. In recent years others have followed the exploration of color–emotion relationships, including studying the cultural impact on such relationships: Ou, Luo, Woodcock, and Wright’s (2004) with British and Chinese subjects provided additional support to the notion of universality. While the body of literature supporting the concept of color–emotion relationships stretches over 100 years, it should also be recognized that the discussion of color is much more detailed and elaborate than that of emotions, and thus our notion of emotions requires further development and understanding.
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CONCLUDING COMMENTS ON LEVERAGING EMOTIONS TO MANAGE VALUE ADDING AND EXTRACTING The reviewed literature provides preliminary support to the notion of emotion as a central component within the brand/product proposition. As such companies need to look for ways to employ emotions to trigger these relationships. Color as a design element for brands and products may be such a strategic lever, able to add and extract value, and promotes the following propositions: 1. Strategy can be viewed as a dynamic on-going process of adding value to customers and extracting value for the company. 2. Value for customers is difficult because of its subjective, perceptive, and dynamic natures. At the same time, it is strongly tied to individual needs and values supported by relevant cognitions and emotions, which for the most part are triggered by product features. 3. Connecting with customers’ emotions is critical, as it may foster and generate a desired customer behavior per the C–A–B paradigm. This relationship between color and emotion is crucial because it is at this intersection that color connects with value to customers, which in turn links with value for the company. If we are to further this theoretical view of how to leverage emotions within brands and products through the use of color, further research must test the propositions put forward. Case study methodology is of particular value as it can allow for ethnography building on a subject interesting and promising and yet preliminary and under-conceptualized.
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CHAPTER 6 THE INTENTIONAL USE OF SERVICE RECOVERY STRATEGIES TO INFLUENCE CONSUMER EMOTION, COGNITION AND BEHAVIOR Dominique A. Keeffe, Rebekah Russell-Bennett and Alastair Tombs ABSTRACT Service recovery strategies have been identified as a critical factor in the success of service organizations. This study develops a conceptual framework to investigate how specific service recovery strategies influence the emotional, cognitive and negative behavioral responses of consumers, as well as how emotion and cognition influence negative behavior. Understanding the impact of specific service recovery strategies will allow service providers to more deliberately and intentionally engage in strategies that result in positive organizational outcomes. This study was conducted using a 2 2 between-subjects quasi-experimental design. The results suggest that service recovery has a significant impact on emotion, cognition and negative behavior. Similarly, satisfaction, negative emotion and positive emotion all influence negative behavior but distributive justice has no effect. Functionality, Intentionality and Morality Research on Emotion in Organizations, Volume 3, 141–175 Copyright r 2007 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1746-9791/doi:10.1016/S1746-9791(07)03006-4
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INTRODUCTION Both service failure and service recovery have gained increasing prevalence in services marketing literature of late (Andreassen, 2000; Forrester & Maute, 2001; Hoffman, Kelley, & Rotalsky, 1995; Johnson & Zinkham, 1991; Kelley, Hoffman, & Davis, 1993). Regardless of the best intentions of service providers and their organizations, service delivery is seldom perfect. Moreover, the inseparable nature of service production and consumption makes flawless service delivery unrealistic (Bitner, Booms, & Tetreault, 1990; Fisk, Brown, & Bitner, 1993). When service organizations fail to meet the needs or expectations of their customers (Smith, Bolton, & Wagner, 1999), they ‘‘breach the central promise concept’’ of exchange relationships and threaten their customers’ trust (Gronroos, 1995; Palmer, Beggs, & Keown-McMullan, 2000). Service providers often respond to these organizational ‘‘moments of truth’’ (Smith & Bolton, 2002) by engaging in service recovery, which is an attempt to redeem a failed encounter by undertaking some form of ‘‘corrective action’’ (Gronroos, 1988). According to McColl-Kennedy and Sparks (2003), service recovery strategies ‘‘have a significant impact on customers’ emotional and cognitive responses’’ to a failed service encounter. In turn, these responses are thought to directly impact behavior (McColl-Kennedy & Sparks, 2003). Previous research suggests that appropriate recovery strategies can re-establish customer satisfaction, redeem customer relationships and reduce customer defection (Smith et al., 1999), whereas inferior recovery strategies can result in a double deviation from customer expectations (Bitner et al., 1990). Thus, the aim of service recovery is to deliberately influence consumers’ emotions, cognition and behavior in favor of the organization. Although there are many studies that have investigated individual emotional, cognitive and behavioral responses to service failure and recovery strategies (e.g., Davidow, 2003; Smith & Bolton, 2002; Wirtz & Mattila, 2004), none of these studies link all three responses to specific service recovery strategies. More importantly, while behaviors that are detrimental to the organization (such as exit or negative word-of-mouth) are often investigated, deviant or dysfunctional behavioral responses (such as theft or verbal attack) are not. This bias is surprising given that service recovery focuses primarily on minimising destructive consumer behavior (Huefner & Hunt, 2000) and may be the result of an assumption that consumers behave rationally and appropriately within exchange environments (Fullerton & Punj, 1993). In fact, qualitative investigations suggest that this is far from the truth (Harris & Reynolds, 2003; Huefner & Hunt, 2000). Consumer
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behavior research thus appears over-focused on the functional and places little emphasis on the dysfunctional (Harris & Reynolds, 2004). Consequently, this study investigates how specific service recovery strategies influence the emotional, cognitive and behavioral responses of consumers, because understanding the influence of service recovery will allow service providers to more deliberately and intentionally engage in strategies that result in positive organizational outcomes. Linking all three responses to service recovery strategies is important due to the ‘‘interactive relationship among affect, social cognition and interpersonal behavior’’ during service encounters (Forgas, 2001). This study aims to answer the following research questions: RQ1. What is the influence of specific service recovery strategies on consumers’ subsequent (1) emotional responses, (2) cognitive responses and (3) negative behavioral responses? RQ2. What is the influence of emotional and cognitive responses on negative behavioral responses to service recovery? In this study, a conceptual framework (see Fig. 1) that links service recovery strategies, emotions, cognition and negative behavior is developed and investigated. The results provide insights about how consumers respond to specific service recovery strategies and thus how service providers could potentially use them to generate more appropriate consumer responses. The following section outlines the conceptual framework for the study and reviews the relevant literature. Next, the method of the study is described and the results are analyzed. Finally, the implications of the results and future directions of the study are outlined.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK Service Recovery Service recovery is an attempt to redeem a failed encounter by undertaking some form of ‘‘corrective action’’ (Gronroos, 1988). Initially, research in the field of service failure and recovery focused on creating classification schemes (Smith et al., 1999). Critical incident techniques (CIT) were used to initially categorize service encounters into favorable and unfavorable incidents (Bitner, Booms, & Mohr, 1994; Bitner et al., 1990). Subsequently, service failures have been classified (1) as either outcome or process failures,
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EMOTIONAL REPONSES • Positive • Negative
NEGATIVE CUSTOMER BEHAVIOR
SERVICE RECOVERY STRATEGY
COGNITIVE RESPONSES • Satisfaction • Distributive Justice
Fig. 1.
Emotional, Cognitive and Negative Behavioral Responses to Service Recovery Strategies.
(2) as core or non-core failures and (3) by the magnitude of the failure (Nguyen & McColl-Kennedy, 2003). These categorizations were deliberately created to complement emerging recovery strategies such as discounts, apology and compensation (Hoffman et al., 1995; Kelley et al., 1993), because research suggested that customers prefer their recovery strategy to ‘‘match’’ the failure that they experience in amounts that are proportionate with the magnitude of the failure (Smith et al., 1999). This finding was supported by Hoffman et al. (1995), who found that some recovery strategies (e.g., compensation) are deemed more favorable than others (e.g., apology or nothing) by consumers. Subsequent research also confirmed that outcome failures are best recovered by compensation and process failures are best recovered by an apology (Smith et al., 1999). As a result of previous research, the specific service recovery strategies of compensation and apology were investigated in this study. These two recovery strategies were chosen for three reasons. Prior research suggests that (1) organizations will respond to service failure by offering a recovery strategy that involves economic resources (such as compensation), social resources (such as an apology) or both (Smith et al., 1999); (2) some recovery strategies
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Table 1.
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Specific Recovery Strategies Investigated in this Research.
Presence of Compensation Absence of Compensation
Presence of Apology
Absence of Apology
Compensation and apology Apology, but no compensation
Compensation, but no apology No compensation or apology (nothing; control condition)
(such as compensation) are more favorable than others (such as apology or nothing) (Hoffman et al., 1995); and (3) outcome failures are best recovered by compensation and process failures are best recovered by apology (Smith et al., 1999). Consequently, the two specific recovery strategies investigated in this research needed to represent both economic/outcome dimensions and social/process dimensions, as well as being able to be meaningfully combined. Compensation and apology fulfil these criteria. The resulting service recovery strategies used in this study are represented in Table 1.
Negative Behavioral Responses Since the emergence of the concepts of service failure and recovery, service organizations have been burdened with the philosophy that the customer is always right and that customer satisfaction and loyalty should be obtained at all costs (Woo & Fock, 2004). Some customers, coined ‘‘jaycustomers’’ by Lovelock (1994), take advantage of this service ethos and misbehave in order to gain excessive utility from service providers’ mistakes (Harris & Reynolds, 2004). This misbehavior is known as dysfunctional customer behavior and refers to ‘‘actions by customers who intentionally or unintentionally, overtly or covertly, act in a manner that, in some way, disrupts otherwise functional service encounters’’ (Harris & Reynolds, 2003). This misbehavior can be directed at (1) an organization’s employees, (2) merchandise, (3) financial assets, (4) customers and (5) physical and electronic premises (Fullerton & Punj, 2004). Anecdotal evidence suggests that ‘‘consumer vandalism, retaliation, violence, illegitimate complaining and compulsive consumption’’ are all regularly manifested dysfunctional customer behaviors (Harris & Reynolds, 2004). In essence, this behavior is anti-social and counterproductive (Bennett & Robinson, 2000). In their conceptual paper, Fullerton and Punj (1993) state that dysfunctional customer behavior can result in ‘‘serious financial, physical and/or psychological harm to marketing institutions and their employees, and to other consumers’’ (Fullerton & Punj, 1993). A qualitative study by Harris
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and Reynolds (2003) supports this claim by finding that dysfunctional customer behavior has consequences for (1) employees, (2) customers and (3) organizations themselves. Customer–contact employees were found to be affected emotionally (in the short-term), psychologically (in the long-term), behaviorally and physically by dysfunctional behavior (Harris & Reynolds, 2003). Other customers can experience spoilt consumption effects and/or a domino effect, which is exhibited either as a collective expression of sympathy for the service provider or as a ‘‘contagion’’ of the behavior (Harris & Reynolds, 2003). Finally, organizations suffer direct and indirect financial costs due to misbehavior. In combination, the effects of dysfunctional behavior can result in customer dissatisfaction and switching, employee absenteeism and turnover, reduced job satisfaction and financial loss (Fullerton & Punj, 1993). However, the fact that this behavior is less than ideal does not preclude it from being logical (Harris & Reynolds, 2004); dysfunctional customer behavior is ‘‘frequently a behavioral manifestation of deeper, cognitive evaluations and judgements’’ (Harris & Reynolds, 2004). Consequently, this behavior is worth investigating more thoroughly in service settings given its severe consequences for organizations. Obviously, dysfunctional customer behavior is not the only behavioral response provoked by service failure and recovery. Service recovery has been linked to a number of more functional post-purchase behaviors: positive word-of-mouth (Maxham, 2001), negative word-of-mouth (Wirtz & Mattila, 2004), compliment and complaint (Mattila & Wirtz, 2004), repurchase intentions (Palmer et al., 2000), exit (Davidow, 2003) and switching (Bougie, Pieters, & Zeelenberg, 2003). All of these behaviors are considered acceptable conduct within an exchange environment because they allow service providers and customers to work towards a mutually acceptable goal. This suggests that while dysfunctional behaviors are inherently negative, functional behavior can be both positive (e.g., positive word-of-mouth, compliment, repurchase) and negative (e.g., negative word-of-mouth, complaint, exit) from an organization’s perspective. Since service recovery is ultimately conducted to minimise the negative effects of a service failure, this study focuses on how service recovery strategies influence two types of negative consumer behavior: functional negative behavior (e.g., complaint, negative word-of-mouth, exit) and dysfunctional negative behavior (e.g., retaliation). To date there is limited research (e.g., Fullerton & Punj, 1993; Huefner et al., 2002) that investigates both functional and dysfunctional negative behavior. Likewise, there is no definitive list of negative behaviors in a service failure context. Huefner et al.’s (2002) set of parallel behavioral responses to satisfaction and dissatisfaction (ranked in order of severity) is a useful
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taxonomy to assist in developing a list of functional and dysfunctional negative behaviors (Huefner et al., 2002). Essentially, Huefner et al. (2002) divided potential behavioral responses to satisfaction and dissatisfaction into two categories: positive functional behavior such as complimenting, repurchase, loyalty and substantial helping; and negative behavior such as complaining, negative word-of-mouth, exit and retaliation. As the focus of this research is negative behavior, Huefner et al.’s (2002) behavioral responses to dissatisfaction will be used as a typology of negative behavioral responses. Three categories of negative behavioral response are identified in Huefner et al.’s (2002) research: voice (complaining and word-of-mouth), exit (including switching) and retaliation. Retaliation is defined as ‘‘aggressive behavior done with the intention to get even’’ (Huefner & Hunt, 2000). Huefner and Hunt (2000) identified six categories of retaliation, which include behaviors such as making false appointments, engaging in theft for revenge and disseminating exaggerated negative information with the intent of hurting the business. These six categories of retaliation closely align with the categorization of aberrant customer behavior developed by Fullerton and Punj (2004). A comparison is presented in Table 2. The complementary nature of Fullerton and Punj’s (2004) aberrant customer behavior categorization and Huefner and Hunt’s (2000) retaliation categorization provide theoretical support for using Huefner et al.’s (2002) taxonomy of behavioral responses in a service failure and recovery context. Given that some recovery strategies (e.g., compensation) are deemed more favorable than others (e.g., apology or nothing) (Hoffman et al., 1995), customers who receive high-level or more favorable service recovery strategies (e.g., compensation and an apology) are expected to be less likely to engage in either functional negative behavior (such as complaining or taking their business elsewhere) or dysfunctional behavior (such as verbal abuse or vandalism). Conversely, customers who receive low-level or less favorable Table 2.
Comparison of Consumer Misbehavior Categories.
Categories by Fullerton and Punj (2004) Behavior directed at employees Behavior directed at merchandise Behavior directed at financial assets Behavior directed at customers Behavior directed at physical and electronic premises
Categories by Huefner and Hunt (2000) Personal attack (physical or verbal abuse) Trashing Create cost/loss Stealing (Illegitimate) Negative word-of-mouth Vandalism
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service recovery strategies (e.g., apology or nothing at all) are expected to be more likely to engage in both functional and dysfunctional negative behaviors. Thus, the relationship between the level of service recovery offered and consumer behavior is hypothesized as follows: Hypothesis 1. As the service recovery strategy improves (from nothing to apology to compensation to compensation and apology) consumers are (a) less likely to engage in functional negative behavior (e.g., complaint, exit) and (b) less likely to engage in dysfunctional behavior (e.g., verbal abuse, illegitimate complaining). Emotional Responses Contemporary research has shifted towards investigating emotions in service settings due to their influence on service evaluations, particularly for high-involvement services (Johnson & Zinkham, 1991; Mattila & Enz, 2002). Bagozzi, Gopinath, and Nyer (1999) define an emotion as ‘‘a mental state of readiness that arises from cognitive appraisals of events or thoughts y and may result in specific actions to affirm or cope with the emotion’’. Emotions are thought to arise in social exchange settings in response to an appraisal of something significant to one’s welfare (Bagozzi et al., 1999; Mattila & Enz, 2002). As the failure and recovery of a service provision is indeed significant to consumer welfare, appraisals of service recovery efforts are likely to evoke emotions that may drive negative consumer behavior (be it functional or dysfunctional). A number of prior studies have linked emotions and key service recovery outcomes. For example, Andreassen (2000) linked negative emotions to reduced customer satisfaction, Oliver (1993) linked positive emotions to increased satisfaction, and Smith and Bolton (2002) linked neutral and negative emotions to various levels of satisfaction. Similarly, extant research into emotions has found that evaluations of service encounter satisfaction correlate highly with displayed emotions (Mattila & Enz, 2002) and that perceptions of perceived justice were predictive of negative or positive emotion (Schoefer & Ennew, 2005). As this research investigates responses to service recovery (rather than service failure), it is likely that a large range of both positive and negative emotions will be expressed. Moreover, the presence of positive emotional responses may mean that the service recovery strategy has negated the
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negative or neutral emotions engendered by the service failure. Thus, this research also broadens emotions research by investigating both the positive and negative emotions that arise from specific service recovery strategies. The relationship between the level of service recovery offered and emotion is hypothesized as follows: Hypothesis 2. As the service recovery strategy improves (from nothing to apology to compensation to compensation and apology) consumers are (a) more likely to experience positive emotions and (b) less likely to experience negative emotions. Both discrete and superordinate emotions, which represent the valance of the emotional state, have been linked to service failure and recovery efforts (e.g., Bougie et al., 2003; Nguyen & McColl-Kennedy, 2003; Smith & Bolton, 2002). However, investigations of discrete emotions generally focus on affective extremes such as anger (Bougie et al., 2003), delight (Rust & Oliver, 2000), betrayal (Price, Arnould, & Bardhi, 2004) and desire for vengeance (Bechwati & Morrin, 2003). Furthermore, these emotions are associated with behavioral outcomes such as voice, exit and negative wordof-mouth. For example, Bechwati and Morrin (2003) found that when the desire for vengeance is strong enough, customers will switch to suboptimal products or services to get even with the firm. Their research suggests that this suboptimal switching behavior ‘‘may provide psychological utility to those consumers that y offsets the loss of objective product utility’’ (Bechwati & Morrin, 2003). Based on this knowledge, the hypothesized relationship between emotion and negative consumer behavior is as follows: Hypothesis 3. Consumers who experience higher levels of positive emotion are (a) less likely to engage in functional negative behavior (e.g., complaint, exit) and (b) less likely to engage in dysfunctional behavior (e.g., verbal abuse, illegitimate complaining). Hypothesis 4. Consumers who experience higher levels of negative emotion are (a) more likely to engage in functional negative behavior (e.g., complaint, exit) and (b) more likely to engage in dysfunctional behavior (e.g., verbal abuse, illegitimate complaining).
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Cognitive Responses Both theory and research suggest that consumers engage in ‘‘extensive cognitive appraisal’’ following service failure and recovery (Forrester & Maute, 2001). There are two key cognitive constructs that inform current service failure and recovery literature: satisfaction and perceived justice (Andreassen, 2000; Dube & Menon, 2000; McCollough, Berry, & Yadav, 2000; Spreng, Harrell, & Mackoy, 1995). Satisfaction is often investigated as a key outcome of service failure and recovery strategies. Oliver (1997) defines satisfaction as ‘‘the customer’s fulfilment response; a judgement that a product or service feature, or the product or service itself, provided a pleasurable level of consumption-related fulfilment, including levels of under-fulfilment or overfulfilment’’. Satisfaction judgements are made by assessing the expectations, performance and disconfirmation of expectations of both the process and outcome dimensions of a service delivery, as consumer expectations prior to the purchase of a product or service can act as a standard for a satisfaction judgement (Hill, 2003; Oliver, 1980; Szymanski & Henard, 2001). Although satisfaction has an affective component, evaluations are cognitive processes and satisfaction is consequently considered to be a cognitive response (Weiss, 2002). Satisfaction has been found to vary significantly in response to the implementation of specific service recovery strategies (Maxham, 2001; Sparks & McColl-Kennedy, 2001). For example, moderate to high service recovery efforts such as compensation significantly increase satisfaction (Maxham, 2001). Extant research measures satisfaction as a key endogenous variable; however, this forces researchers to make assumptions about the effect of satisfaction on salient marketing outcomes such as consumer behavior. Consequently, this research investigates satisfaction as a cognitive response to service recovery and then assesses its impact on consumers’ behavioral responses. Perceived justice is often researched alongside satisfaction in relation to service failure and recovery. According to McColl-Kennedy and Sparks (2003), justice theory is predicated on the ‘‘idea that customers’ levels of satisfaction and their future loyalty depend on whether the customer feels that they were treated fairly, that is, whether justice was done’’. Perceived justice is often linked to service failure and recovery because its dimensions incorporate aspects of fairness and equity theory, implying that exchange interactions between service providers and consumers should be equitable (Andreassen, 2000). There are three dimensions of perceived justice: (1) distributive justice, which focuses on the actual service recovery outcome; (2) interactional
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justice, which focuses on the service provider–consumer exchange; and (3) procedural justice, which focuses on the process of service recovery (Sparks & McColl-Kennedy, 2001). Although recent research has focused on linking all three justice dimensions to satisfaction and behavioral intentions (Smith & Bolton, 1998; Tax, Brown, & Chandrashekaran, 1998), this study focuses solely on distributive justice for two reasons. Firstly, distributive justice is concerned with resource allocation and the perceived outcome of an exchange (Smith et al., 1999). Service recovery strategies directly represent these exchange outcomes and research has shown that distributive justice is strongly and positively affected by compensation (Smith et al., 1999). Secondly, distributive justice has been identified as a ‘‘necessary but not sufficient condition’’ for engendering interactional and procedural justice (McCollough et al., 2000). Consequently, only the initial evaluations of distributive justice will be investigated in this study. Customers who receive an optimal service recovery strategy (e.g., compensation and an apology, or compensation) are expected to report higher levels of both satisfaction and distributive justice than customers who receive a suboptimal service recovery strategy (e.g., nothing or apology). Thus, the hypothesized relationship between service recovery strategies, satisfaction and distributive justice is as follows: Hypothesis 5. As the service recovery strategy improves (from nothing to apology to compensation to compensation and apology) consumers are more likely to report higher levels of (a) satisfaction and (b) distributive justice. As stated earlier, cognitive evaluations and judgments frequently drive behavior (Harris & Reynolds, 2004). For example, the three dimensions of perceived justice have been empirically linked to varying levels of word-of-mouth, satisfaction and repurchase intention (Davidow, 2003; McCollough et al., 2000; Palmer et al., 2000). Based on this knowledge, the hypothesized relationship between cognition and negative consumer behavior is as follows: Hypothesis 6. Consumers who experience higher levels of satisfaction are (a) less likely to engage in functional negative behavior (e.g., complaint, exit) and (b) less likely to engage in dysfunctional behavior (e.g., verbal abuse, illegitimate complaining).
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Hypothesis 7. Consumers who experience higher levels of distributive justice are (a) less likely to engage in functional negative behavior (e.g., complaint, exit) and (b) less likely to engage in dysfunctional behavior (e.g., verbal abuse, illegitimate complaining).
METHOD Experimental Design In order to assess how specific service recovery strategies affect the emotional, cognitive and negative behavioral responses of consumers, a 2 2 between-subjects quasi-experimental design was administered via a written survey. More specifically, the study used written role-playing scenarios to manipulate two possible levels (presence and absence) of two service recovery strategies (apology and compensation), resulting in four possible scenarios: (1) the presence of both compensation and apology, (2) the presence of compensation but absence of apology, (3) the presence of apology but absence of compensation and (4) the absence of both compensation and apology (a control scenario). These specific strategies were chosen to maximise the variation in service recovery.
Scenario Development The form and content of the scenarios were carefully developed to manipulate or control for a number of exchange setting characteristics. Initially, care was taken to choose a service encounter that was realistic as well as relevant and familiar to the sample (Schoefer & Ennew, 2005). Previous research suggests that there is an increase of consumer aggression in the airline industry (Harris & Reynolds, 2004), particularly in relation to incidences such as baggage loss and flight delays (Scherer & Caechi, 2000). Consequently, a hypothetical baggage loss scenario describing the loss of a customer’s luggage following an interstate flight was developed. The scenario was as follows: Sam has decided to visit family in Darwin for a five-day holiday and has booked a flight with Flight Australia. This is a new airline that Sam has never flown with before but
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whose ticket price and service standard is similar to other carriers. Since Sam is flying alone and has never experienced any travel problems previously, Sam decides against purchasing travel insurance. The check-in and flight proceeds as normal but when reaching the baggage claim area, Sam’s suitcase is missing. Sam then heads over to the Lost Baggage desk (where there are no other customers) and tells the Flight Australia employee about the missing suitcase.
The scenario was written to control a large number of factors: prior relationships with the airline, competitive parity, the influence of peers, prior experience of baggage loss, gender and alternative sources of service recovery. The scenario was worded in third-person to control for the social desirability bias inherent in admitting to negative behavior. Gender was controlled in the third-person scenarios by using the gender-neutral name ‘‘Sam’’, which could refer to the masculine name Samuel or the feminine name Samantha. Pre-tests showed that 95% of respondent had not heard of the fictitious airline ‘‘Flight Australia’’ before reading the passage. The scenario was also subjected to realism and credibility tests (Sparks & McColl-Kennedy, 2001), which resulted in the addition of the footnote to increase the credibility of the optimal service recovery. Having outlined the service failure and controlled for extraneous factors, the scenario was then manipulated to produce the four possible recovery strategies. These manipulations are outlined in Table 3.
Sample The sample for this study consisted of 80 Generation Y (born between 1977 and 1993) consumers from a large Australian university, ensuring that each scenario manipulation had 20 respondents. Although this is a relatively small sample, its size was derived from the recommendation of Hair, Anderson, Tatham, and Black (1998), who suggest that the minimum cell size for MANOVA analysis is 20 observations, provided that those observations are greater than the number of dependent variables. The cell size for each manipulation ranged from 19 to 22 respondents, resulting in appropriate statistical power and statistical conclusion validity to conduct the study. The sample contained more females than males (57% female and 43% male) and the mean age of the respondents was 20 years old. A Generation Y sample frame was chosen for three reasons. Firstly, prior research suggests that ‘‘younger, more educated and higher income consumers’’ are more likely to tolerate ethical transgressions (Fullerton, Kerch, & Dodge, 1996). Secondly, previous studies have identified Generation Y as
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Table 3.
Manipulations of Service Recovery Strategies.
Presence of Compensation
Absence of Compensation
Presence of Apology
Absence of Apology
Scenario 1 After checking all the expected places, the employee apologizes and informs Sam that financial compensation will be provided for the lost suitcase and items, as well as any emergency clothing and toiletries that Sam might need. Sam is then given a claim form to fill in Scenario 3 After checking all the expected places, the employee apologizes and informs Sam that the airline would be in contact if the suitcase is found, although lost baggage recovery can take up to two weeks
Scenario 2 After checking all the expected places, the employee informs Sam that financial compensation will be provided for the lost suitcase and items, as well as any emergency clothing and toiletries that Sam might need Scenario 4 After checking all the expected places, the employee informs Sam that Flight Australia is not responsible for lost baggage and that it is the passenger’s responsibility to take out appropriate insurance. There is nothing that the employee can do
a consumer group that engages in and admits to aberrant customer behavior (Freestone & Mitchell, 2004). Finally, scenario pilot-testing showed that Generation Y respondents were likely to be both knowledgeable and experienced with the service setting. In this sample, all but three respondents (98%) had previously flown on an airplane and nearly a fifth of respondents (17.5%) had some experience of airlines losing their baggage. Each respondent was randomly assigned one of the four experimental conditions. Participants were assured of their anonymity, informed that the study was voluntary and advised that they could withdraw at any time.
Procedure Before beginning the survey, participants were asked to read the participant information sheet and then sign a statement of consent if they were willing to participate in the research. In Part 1, participants were asked to indicate their current mood by circling the Kunin face that best described how they were feeling (Kunin, 1955, 1998). This check allowed mood to be controlled
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when the results were analyzed, which is particularly important when researching emotions to remove any confounding effects (Hill & Ward, 1989). In Part 2, respondents were asked to read a scenario describing a baggage loss and the recovery strategy offered by the airline, then consider the likelihood of a third party (referred to as ‘‘Sam’’, a gender-neutral name) engaging in a number of functional or dysfunctional negative behavioral responses. The scenario manipulations are outlined in Table 3. Behavior was measured before cognitive or emotional responses to prevent common method bias. Part 3 asked respondents to answer a number of questions measuring (1) their perceptions of the distributive justice Sam received, (2) their estimation of Sam’s satisfaction with the recovery strategy and (3) Sam’s emotions towards the service recovery strategy. This section was carefully worded to avoid the influence of affective forecasting. Prior research by Fullerton and Punj (1993) states that a number of individual characteristics (such as demographic characteristics, personality traits, attitude towards big business and antecedent state) might impact on a respondent’s willingness to engage in aberrant behavior. As this study investigated the effects of the exchange setting rather than the effects of individual consumer differences, Parts 4 and 5 of the survey recorded personal information (including age, gender, experience with the service provision, experience with the service failure, mood, attitude towards big business, personality traits and consumption values) to statistically control for their effects.
Measures The measurement scales used in the study were adapted from previous studies in marketing and psychology (Huefner & Hunt, 2000; Kunin, 1955; Smith & Bolton, 1998). With the exception of mood, each construct was measured using a 5-, 7- or 9-point Likert scale anchored at the endpoints (strongly agree and strongly disagree). The reliability of the scale was validated using Cronbach’s a and the corrected item-to-total correlations. All Cronbach’s a values and corrected item–total correlations exceeded the respective cut-offs of 0.7 and 0.3 recommended by Nunnally (1978). Only one variable showed a significant percentage of missing data: consumption value (21%). This is likely due to the respondents’ failure to properly read the survey instructions. As this variable was only a control variable, it was retained but interpreted with caution. The items, sources and reliabilities of each scale are presented in appendix.
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Method of Analysis In order to assess how specific service recovery strategies affect the emotional, cognitive and negative behavioral responses of customers, three separate statistical techniques were used: analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), multiple analyzes of covariance (MANCOVA) and multiple regression analysis. Both ANCOVA and MANCOVA explore whether there is a statistically significant difference among the means of several groups, while controlling for the possible effects of confounding variables (Pallant, 2005). Specifically, the four experimental manipulations were analyzed as the fixed factors and the emotional, cognitive and negative behavioral responses were analyzed as dependent variables using ANCOVA and MANCOVA. Multiple regression analysis was used to identify the effect that cognitive and emotional responses had on negative behavioral responses. Prior to analysing the results, a number of statistical tests were conducted to ensure that the data conforms to the assumptions of ANCOVA, MANCOVA and regression analysis. Those tests indicated that the assumptions of both techniques have been satisfied, thus increasing the confidence in the results.
RESULTS There were seven hypotheses investigated in this study. Within the conceptual framework, service recovery is linked to behavior (Hypothesis 1), emotion (Hypothesis 2) and cognition (Hypothesis 5). Both emotion (Hypotheses 3 and 4) and cognition (Hypotheses 6 and 7) are also linked to behavior. Of the seven hypotheses, six were supported. This outcome is summarised in Table 4 and the results are given below.
Negative Behavioral Responses Hypothesis 1 proposed that as the service recovery strategy improves (from nothing to apology to compensation to compensation and apology) consumers are (a) less likely to engage in functional negative behavior (e.g., complaint, exit) and (b) less likely to engage in dysfunctional behavior (e.g., verbal abuse, illegitimate complaining). Two univariate tests were conducted to assess the effect of service recovery strategy on functional and dysfunctional negative behavior. The first univariate analysis revealed that there was a statistically significant difference in average functional negative behavior
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Table 4.
Summary of Hypotheses.
Behavioral responses to service recovery H1 As the service recovery strategy improves (from nothing to apology to compensation to compensation and apology) consumers are (a) less likely to engage in functional negative behavior (e.g., complaint, exit) and (b) less likely to engage in dysfunctional behavior (e.g., verbal abuse, illegitimate complaining) Emotional responses to service recovery H2 As the service recovery strategy improves (from nothing to apology to compensation to compensation and apology) consumers are (a) more likely to experience positive emotions and (b) less likely to experience negative emotions H3 Consumers who experience higher levels of positive emotion are (a) less likely to engage in functional negative behavior (e.g., complaint, exit) and (b) less likely to engage in dysfunctional behavior (e.g., verbal abuse, illegitimate complaining) H4 Consumers who experience higher levels of negative emotion are (a) more likely to engage in functional negative behavior (e.g., complaint, exit) and (b) more likely to engage in dysfunctional behavior (e.g., verbal abuse, illegitimate complaining) Cognitive responses to service recovery H5 As the service recovery strategy improves (from nothing to apology to compensation to compensation and apology) consumers are more likely to report higher levels of (a) satisfaction and (b) distributive justice H6 Consumers who experience higher levels of satisfaction are (a) less likely to engage in functional negative behavior (e.g., complaint, exit) and (b) less likely to engage in dysfunctional behavior (e.g., verbal abuse, illegitimate complaining) H7 Consumers who experience higher levels of distributive justice are (a) less likely to engage in functional negative behavior (e.g., complaint, exit) and (b) less likely to engage in dysfunctional behavior (e.g., verbal abuse, illegitimate complaining)
Supported Supported
Supported Supported
Supported Supported
Supported Supported
Supported Supported Supported Supported
Not supported Not supported
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Table 5.
Impact of Service Recovery on Negative Behavioral Responses.
Scenario
Nothing Apology Compensation Compensation+apology
Functional Negative Behavior
Dysfunctional Negative Behavior
Mean
Standard deviation
Mean
Standard deviation
3.7436 3.4667 3.0694 2.7974
0.40160 0.56375 0.74577 0.64338
2.0759 1.9077 1.6827 1.7149
0.65028 0.76604 0.62737 0.66826
Significant at po.05.
based on the effects of specific service recovery strategies (F ¼ 7.469, p ¼ .000). As the level of service recovery strategy improved (from nothing to apology to compensation to compensation and apology), mean scores of functional negative behavior decreased. This suggests that optimal recovery strategies reduce the occurrence of complaint and exit. The second univariate analysis revealed that there was also a statistically significant difference in average dysfunctional behavior based on the effects of specific service recovery strategies (F ¼ 2.341, po.01). As the level of service recovery strategy increased (from nothing to apology to compensation to compensation and apology), mean scores of dysfunctional behavior decreased. This suggests that optimal service recovery strategies reduce the occurrence of retaliation. The changes in mean scores are presented in Table 5 and provide support for support Hypothesis 1.
Emotional Responses Hypothesis 2 proposed that as the service recovery strategy improves (from nothing to apology to compensation to compensation and apology) consumers are (a) more likely to experience positive emotions and (b) less likely to experience negative emotions. Again, two univariate tests were conducted to assess the aggregate effect of service recovery strategy on positive and negative emotions. The first univariate analysis revealed that there was a statistically significant difference in the mean scores of average positive emotion based on the effects of specific service recovery strategies (F ¼ 3.248, po.05). Similarly, there was a statistically significant difference in mean scores of average negative emotion based on the effects of specific service recovery strategies (F ¼ 4.442, po.05). The changes in mean score of aggregate
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Table 6.
Impact of Service Recovery on Aggregate Emotional Responses.
Scenario
Nothing Apology Compensation Compensation+apology
Aggregate Positive Emotion
Aggregate Negative Emotion
Mean
Standard Deviation
Mean
Standard Deviation
1.9391 2.4211 2.3421 3.3004
0.49352 1.24581 0.76343 1.49366
4.3777 4.1074 3.7222 3.3105
0.97720 1.08328 1.25314 1.04417
Significant at po.05.
positive and negative emotion can be seen in Table 6. Consequently, as the service recovery strategy improves (from nothing to apology to compensation to compensation and apology), aggregate positive emotions increase and aggregate negative emotions decrease, providing support for Hypothesis 2. More specifically, MANCOVA was used to investigate which discrete positive and negative emotions were affected by specific service recovery strategies. Firstly, the multivariate analysis revealed that there was a statistically significant difference (F ¼ 1.563, po.01) in the mean scores of seven positive emotions due to specific service recovery efforts: fulfilment (F ¼ 3.573, po.05), happiness (F ¼ 3.412, po.05), optimism (F ¼ 3.984, po.05), feeling pleased (F ¼ 4.077, po.05), relief (F ¼ 5.019, po.05), surprise (F ¼ 2.883, po.05) and feeling thrilled (F ¼ 3.937, po.05). The changes in mean scores can be seen in Table 7. Conversely, there is no statistically significant difference in mean scores of discrete negative emotions as a result of specific service recovery strategies. This may be because differing levels of service recovery engender a mix of discrete negative emotions with no specific emotion dominating the general affective state. In general, as the level of service recovery strategy improved (from nothing to apology to compensation to compensation and apology), mean scores of the discrete positive emotions increased. The only emotion that failed to follow this general trend is surprise, where apology has the highest mean score (4.21), followed by compensation and apology (4.20), then nothing (3.64) and compensation (2.80). This is possibly because surprise can be a positive or negative emotion. This is consistent with Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson, and O’Connor (1987) who list surprise as one of the six basic emotions situated between two positive basic emotions and three negative basic emotions. Following on from Hypothesis 2, Hypothesis 3 proposed that consumers who experience higher levels of positive emotion are (a) less likely to engage in
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Table 7. Impact of Service Recovery on Discrete Positive Emotions. Scenario
Mean
Standard Deviation
Fulfilled Nothing Apology Compensation Compensation+apology
1.00 1.50 2.27 2.60
0.000 0.855 1.223 1.957
Happy Nothing Apology Compensation Compensation+apology
1.18 1.71 2.20 3.13
0.405 1.069 1.207 2.264
Optimistic Nothing Apology Compensation Compensation+apology
2.36 2.36 2.07 3.73
1.362 1.393 1.223 1.624
Pleased Nothing Apology Compensation Compensation+apology
1.27 1.57 1.93 3.13
0.647 1.342 1.100 2.031
Relieved Nothing Apology Compensation Compensation+apology
1.09 2.07 2.80 3.93
0.302 1.492 1.699 2.120
Surprised Nothing Apology Compensation Compensation+apology
3.64 4.21 2.80 4.20
1.804 1.718 1.699 2.111
Thrilled Nothing Apology Compensation Compensation+apology
1.18 1.50 2.00 2.87
0.603 0.650 1.464 1.506
Significant at po.05.
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functional negative behavior (e.g., complaint, exit) and (b) less likely to engage in dysfunctional behavior (e.g., verbal abuse, illegitimate complaining), whereas Hypothesis 4 proposed that consumers who experience higher levels of negative emotion are (a) more likely to engage in functional negative behavior (e.g., complaint, exit) and (b) more likely to engage in dysfunctional behavior (e.g., verbal abuse, illegitimate complaining). Two multiple regression analyzes were conducted to ascertain what effect aggregate positive and negative emotions have on negative behaviors. The first regression analysis revealed that positive and negative emotions explain approximately 35% of the variance in functional negative behavior (F ¼ 22.411, p ¼ .000). Both positive and negative emotions are significant predictors of functional negative behavior (b ¼ .423, po.05 and b ¼ .425, po.05, respectively) and are almost perfectly inversely related. This suggests that consumers are less likely to engage in functional negative behavior when they are feeling positive but more likely to engage in functional negative behavior when they are feeling negative. The second regression analysis revealed that positive and negative emotions explain about 24% of the variance in dysfunctional behavior (F ¼ 13.745, p ¼ .000). Of the two predictors, only negative emotions appear to be significantly and positively correlated with dysfunctional behavior (b ¼ .510, p ¼ .000). This suggests that consumers are more likely to engage in dysfunctional behavior when they are feeling negative. Overall, these findings support Hypotheses 3 and 4.
Cognitive Responses Hypothesis 5 proposed that as the service recovery strategy improves (from nothing to apology to compensation to compensation and apology) consumers are more likely to report higher levels of (a) satisfaction and (b) distributive justice. Univariate tests revealed that there was a statistically significant difference in satisfaction scores based on the effects of specific service recovery strategies (F ¼ 17.764, p ¼ .000). Likewise, there was a statistically significant difference in distributive justice scores based on the effects of specific service recovery strategies (F ¼ 16.160, p ¼ .000). Consequently, as the level of service recovery strategy improved (from nothing to apology to compensation to compensation and apology), mean scores of both satisfaction and distributive justice increased. This provides support for Hypothesis 5. The changes in mean scores of satisfaction and distributive justice can be seen in Table 8.
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Table 8. Impact of Service Recovery on Cognitive Responses. Scenario
Satisfaction
Nothing Apology Compensation Compensation+apology
Distributive Justice
Mean
Standard deviation
Mean
Standard deviation
1.6923 2.8000 3.7500 4.7059
0.94733 1.26491 1.29099 0.98518
2.0577 3.0000 3.5625 3.8382
0.53184 0.73800 0.85878 0.71229
Significant at po.05.
Following on from Hypothesis 5, Hypothesis 6 proposed that consumers who experience higher levels of satisfaction are (a) less likely to engage in functional negative behavior (e.g., complaint, exit) and (b) less likely to engage in dysfunctional behavior (e.g., verbal abuse, illegitimate complaining), whereas Hypothesis 7 proposed that consumers who experience higher levels of distributive justice are (a) less likely to engage in functional negative behavior (e.g., complaint, exit) and (b) less likely to engage in dysfunctional behavior (e.g., verbal abuse, illegitimate complaining). Again, two multiple regression analyzes were conducted to ascertain what effect satisfaction and distributive justice have on negative behaviors. The first regression analysis revealed that satisfaction and distributive justice explain approximately 23% of the variance in functional negative behavior (F ¼ 12.702, p ¼ .000). Of the two predictors, only satisfaction appears to be significantly and negatively correlated with functional negative behavior (b ¼ .395, po.05). The second regression analysis revealed that satisfaction and distributive justice explain only 7% of the variance in dysfunctional behavior (F ¼ 3.820, po.05). Once again, only satisfaction appears to be significantly and negatively correlated with dysfunctional behavior (b ¼ .322, po.05). The inverse relationship between satisfaction and behavior supports Hypothesis 6 but the non-significant nature of distributive justice in predicting behavior provides no support for Hypothesis 7.
DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS The primary aim of this study was to more fully explain the relationship between service recovery strategies and emotion, cognition and negative behavior. Although previous research has established associations between a number of the constructs under investigation, very little research has
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focused on all three responses to specific service recovery strategies. More importantly, research often considers functional behavior that is detrimental to organizations but fails to investigate behavior that is extreme and dysfunctional. Consequently, this study investigated how specific service recovery strategies affected consumers’ emotional, cognitive and negative behavioral responses (RQ1), as well as investigating the relationships between those responses (RQ2). The results of this study have a number of important implications for both marketing theory and practice. The first contribution of this study is that it adds its support to a growing body of literature that champions the need for adequate and appropriate service recovery strategies in organizations (Davidow, 2003; McColl-Kennedy & Sparks, 2003). The results for Hypothesis 1 show that specific service recovery strategies do influence negative consumer behavior. The intentional use of an optimal service recovery strategy, such as compensation and apology, should then reduce the occurrence of complaint, exit and retaliation. This deceptively simple finding takes on a weighty significance when one considers that retaliatory behavior such as physical attack, verbal abuse, theft and vandalism are more than merely undesirable: they are illegal. This finding suggests that service recovery fulfils its purpose as it reduces the occurrence of a variety of negative behavioral reactions to service failure. Further, service providers can deliberately influence consumers’ negative behavior by instigating appropriate service recovery strategies following a service failure. Practically, if the deliberate use of specific service recovery strategies can reduce the occurrence of negative behavior, than it is likely to have a positive flow-on effect to organizations, their customers and their employees. As stated earlier, negative behavior can result in ‘‘serious financial, physical and/or psychological harm to marketing institutions and their employees, and to other consumers’’ (Fullerton & Punj, 1993). Reducing this behavior then has implications for organizations’ employees, merchandise, financial assets, customers and premises (Fullerton & Punj, 2004). For example, organizations whose employees experience less work stress may have lower levels of absenteeism and employee turnover. They may retain more of their functional customers as the effects of spoilt consumption are reduced and may have less stock shrinkage due to reduced theft or trashing. Secondly, service recovery strategies were found to influence both emotion and cognition. It is unsurprising that an excellent service recovery strategy will leave customers feeling more positive and less negative. Specifically, consumers who receive high-level service recovery strategies are like to feel more fulfilled, happy, optimistic, pleased, relieved and thrilled than their
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fellow consumers who received nothing. However, the mean scores of positive emotions are relatively low (i.e., high-level service recovery mean ¼ 3.3004) while the mean scores of negative emotions are higher (i.e., no service recovery mean ¼ 3.3105), which may indicate some emotional contamination of the service recovery emotions due to the original service failure. This adds to current recovery paradox research that suggests that the ultimate service delivery is reliable and error-free with no need for recovery. Likewise, it is unsurprising that an excellent service recovery strategy will leave customers feeling more satisfied and with a greater sense of justice regarding the outcome of their service encounter. This confirms a large body of research that supports the association between service recovery, satisfaction and distributive justice (Maxham, 2001; McColl-Kennedy & Sparks, 2003; Tax et al., 1998). However, what is interesting about this result is the marked improvement in cognitive responses that an incremental increase in service recovery will create (see Table 8). For example, offering a customer an apology rather than nothing will increase the mean scores of both the satisfaction and distributive justice an entire scale point (see Table 8). Furthermore, the results suggest that as satisfaction increases, incidences of both functional and dysfunctional negative behavior will decrease, although the reductions in dysfunctional behavior may be minor. In practical terms, this means that even a small recovery effort could prevent negative behavior. Interestingly, distributive justice does not significantly influence negative behavior. This may be because respondents assess distributive justice prior to making a satisfaction judgement, subsuming its importance in the relationship. Overall, emotions explain over a third (35%) of variance in functional negative behavior but only a quarter (24%) of dysfunctional behavior. Satisfaction and distributive justice explain just under a quarter (23%) of variance in functional negative behavior but only a fraction (7%) of variance in dysfunctional behavior. Obviously, dysfunctional behavior is hard to predict. The lack of impact of service recovery satisfaction and distributive justice evaluations may provide some support for the suggestion that dysfunctional customer behavior is pre-planned and deliberate rather than a response to dissatisfaction (Fullerton & Punj, 1993; Harris & Reynolds, 2004).
LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS There are a number of limitations that constrain this study. Firstly, the absence of explanatory research regarding dysfunctional behavior has
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resulted in a number of methodological concerns. This is typified by the use of a measurement scale for functional and dysfunctional behavior that was not developed within the dysfunctional behavior domain. Consequently, the functional behaviors in the measurement scale were inherently negative, reducing the variation in responses. Similarly, social desirability bias may have influenced the study responses as negative behavior is not socially acceptable, especially when it is dysfunctional or illegal. Although this was mitigated somewhat by using a third-person scenario in an anonymous survey for a sample known for deviant behavior (i.e., Generation Y), it is possible that social desirability affected the results. Consequently, future research methods need to specifically address social desirability bias. Secondly, this study acts as a preliminary pilot study to link emotion, cognition and negative behavior to service recovery strategies. The results need to be replicated and validated both with a larger Generation Y sample and a more representative sample to enable comparisons with other generational cohorts. It is possible that a more representative sample will also result in different behavioral patterns to those discovered in this study. Finally, the simplicity of the theorised framework of responses to recovery efforts and subsequent customer behavior means that there is a possibility that extraneous variables will affect the relationships under examination. This study focuses on exchange setting characteristics while controlling for individual characteristics; however, theory suggests that dysfunctional customer behavior may be a product of interactions between the consumer and the exchange setting (Fullerton & Punj, 1993). Consequently, a more in-depth study might consider the effects of the type of service, physical environment, types and levels of deterrence and the attitude or conduct of marketing employees as they interact with personality, attitudes and values (Fullerton & Punj, 1993).
CONCLUSION This study was motivated by a lack of research that investigated the emotional, cognitive and negative behavioral responses of consumers to service recovery strategies. This holistic approach to understanding the effects of service recovery strategies has significantly contributed to the services marketing field by finding that even incremental improvements in service recovery can markedly improve consumer responses to service failure. Further, this study addresses the often-ignored area of dysfunctional consumer behavior. Although this preliminary study resulted in some
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interesting conclusions, it highlights the need for further study into how service organizations are affected by negative consumer behavior, particularly dysfunctional behavior, as well as what service recovery strategies could be implemented to intentionally mitigate such behavior.
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Weiss, H. M. (2002). Deconstructing job satisfaction: Separating evaluations, beliefs and affective experiences. Human Resource Management Review, 12, 173–194. Wirtz, J., & Mattila, A. S. (2004). Consumer responses to compensation, speed of recovery and apology after a service failure. International Journal of Service Industry Management, 15(2), 150–166. Woo, K., & Fock, H. K. Y. (2004). Retaining and divesting customers: An exploratory study of right customers, ‘‘at-risk’’ right customers, and wrong customers. Journal of Services Marketing, 18(3), 187–197.
APPENDIX Measurement Scales for Cognitive Responses. Construct Source Scale Item Construct Source Summated scale
Items
Satisfaction Adapted from Bitner and Hubbert (1994) and Oliver and Swan (1989) by Smith et al. (1999) 7-point Likert scale anchored at endpoints (1 ¼ very dissatisfied, 7 ¼ very satisfied) Think about how the airline responded to Sam’s problem. How satisfied would Sam be with Flight Australia’s efforts? Distributive justice Adapted from Oliver and Swan (1989) and Tax (1993) by Smith et al. (1999) Factor 5-point Likert scale anchored at endpoints Item–total correlation loadings (1 ¼ strongly disagree, 5 ¼ strongly agree) 1. The outcome Sam received was fair 0.738 0.863 2. Sam did not get what he/she deserved 0.653 0.804 (R) 3. In resolving the problem, the company 0.664 0.815 gave Sam what was needed 4. The outcome Sam received was not 0.701 0.842 right (R) Cronbach’s a 0.848
R, reversed item.
Measurement Scales for Emotional Responses. Construct Source Summated scale
Discrete emotions Richins (1997) 7-point Likert scale anchored at endpoints (1 ¼ not at all, 7 ¼ strongly)
Item–total correlation
Factor loadings
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APPENDIX (Continued ) Items
Positive emotions Amazed Astonished Calm Contented Eager Encouraged Enthusiastic Excited Fulfilled Happy Hopeful Joyful Optimistic Peaceful Pleased Proud Relieved Sentimental Surprised Thrilled Warmhearted Cronbach’s a
0.302 Deleteda 0.344 0.613 0.343 0.686 0.713 0.672 0.733 0.727 0.401 0.729 0.678 0.763 0.740 0.577 0.642 Deleteda 0.411 0.601 0.754 0.916
0.317 Deleteda 0.424 0.689 0.351 0.710 0.736 0.738 0.811 0.813 0.426 0.795 0.694 0.822 0.811 0.634 0.739 Deleteda 0.423 0.648 0.783
Negative emotions Afraid Angry Depressed Discontented Embarrassed Envious Frustrated Homesick Humiliated Irritated Lonely Miserable Nervous Panicky Sad Scared Tense Unfulfilled Worried Cronbach’s a
0.414 0.605 0.681 0.516 Deleteda 0.359 0.542 0.433 0.505 0.501 0.496 0.643 0.605 0.704 0.723 0.604 0.567 0.588 0.760 0.910
0.465 0.673 0.737 0.596 Deleteda 0.390 0.617 0.472 0.550 0.579 0.538 0.700 0.653 0.760 0.770 0.657 0.630 0.646 0.813
Excluded emotions: ashamed, jealous, sexy, romantic, passionate, loving, guilty. a Items were deleted if the item-to-total correlation or factor loadings fell below 0.3 threshold.
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Measurement Scales for Behavioral Responses. Construct Source Summated scale
Behavior Huefner and Hunt (2000); Huefner et al. (2002) 5-point Likert scale anchored at endpoints Item–total (1 ¼ very unlikely, 5 ¼ very likely) correlation
Items V
Negative functional behaviors Complain to the Flight Australia employee Warn friends and family so that they do not experience the same problem Cancel the flight home on Flight Australia Complain to the Customer Service manager Decide to never fly with Flight Australia again Only fly Flight Australia again if absolutely necessary Complain to Flight Australia’s regional or national headquarters Make a formal complaint to the Airline Complaints Tribunal Purchase a flight home on a different airline Cronbach’s a
V E V E E V V E
R
R R R R R
R R R
Dysfunctional behaviors Threaten an employee that they will be reported to their supervisor for bad customer service if the problem is not corrected Intentionally damage or break something on the Lost Baggage desk Strike an employee Threatens to tell everyone they know if the problem is not solved Disturb other customers to hurt the business Intentionally create a mess at the Lost Baggage desk or in the Flight Australia lounge so that the employees will have to do extra work Use name-calling or obscenities to vent some frustration Make a fake flight reservation to run up expenses Damage the Lost Baggage desk or other Flight Australia facilities
Factor loadings
0.437
0.638
0.461
0.646
0.342
0.468
0.547
0.701
0.647
0.798
0.339
0.450
0.432
0.544
0.336
0.441
0.398
0.532
0.754 0.481
0.535
0.759
0.812
0.716 0.565
0.784 0.620
0.718
0.772
0.781
0.824
0.534
0.595
0.669
0.733
0.814
0.839
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APPENDIX (Continued ) R
File a lawsuit asking for more than just damages Drop a large pile of brochures and luggage tags on the floor to create extra work Deliberately stay past airline office closing hours so that the employee dealing with the problem will have to stay late Tell everyone about the situation as negatively as possible in order to hurt the business Cronbach’s a
R
R
R
0.625
0.703
0.758
0.794
0.675
0.687
0.628
0.623
0.919
V, voice; E, exit; R, retaliation.
Measurement Scale for Attitude Towards Big Business. Construct Source Summated scale
Items
Attitude towards big business Allison (1978) and Lundstrom and Lamont (1976) Item–total 5-point Likert scale anchored at endpoints correlation (1 ¼ strongly disagree, 5 ¼ strongly agree) 1. Big businesses take a real interest in the 0.422 environment and are trying to improve it 2. Big business profits are too high (R) 0.397 3. As soon as they finish serving them, most 0.536 big businesses forget about their customers (R) 4. Employees of large corporations really 0.483 take an interest in the consumer and make sure they receive what they want 0.489 5. Large stores do not care why people buy their products just as long as they make a profit (R) 6. Prices are reasonable given the high cost 0.372 of doing business 7. Unethical practices are widespread 0.519 throughout large businesses (R) 8. Most large companies are responsive to Deleteda the demands of their consumers 9. The only person who cares about the 0.643 consumer is the consumer themselves (R)
Factor loadings 0.534 0.496 0.648
0.591
0.609
0.481 0.617 Deleteda 0.745
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APPENDIX (Continued ) 10. Small businesses are more likely to pay Deleteda attention to customers than large businesses (R) 0.382 11. Large companies try to take a personal interest in each consumer rather than treating them as a number 12. Large organizations are so big that they 0.416 really do not treat their customers personally (R) 13. It is not unusual to find out that large 0.339 corporations have lied to the public (R) 14. The prime objective of big businesses is 0.588 to make money rather than satisfy the consumer (R) Cronbach’s a 0.816
Deleteda
0.488
0.523
0.449 0.688
R, reversed item. Items were deleted if the item-to-total correlation or factor loadings fell below 0.3 threshold.
a
Measurement Scale for Consumption Values. Construct Source Scale Items
Consumption values Kahle and Kennedy (1989) 9-point Likert scale anchored at endpoints (1 ¼ very unimportant, 9 ¼ very important) 1. Sense of belonging 2. Excitement 3. Warm relationships with others 4. Self-fulfilment 5. Being well respected 6. Fun and enjoyment in life 7. Security 8. Self-respect 9. A sense of accomplishment
Now reread the items and circle the one thing that is most important to you in your daily life.
Measurement Scale for Personality Traits. Construct Source Scale
Personality traits International Personality Item Pool (2001) 5-point Likert scale anchored at endpoints (1 ¼ strongly disagree, 5 ¼ strongly agree)
Item–total correlation
Factor loading
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APPENDIX (Continued ) Items
Agreeableness Am interested in people Sympathise with others’ feelings Have a soft heart Take time out for others Feel others’ emotions Make people feel at ease Am not really interested in others (R) Insult people (R) Am not interested in others’ problems (R) Feel little concern for others (R) Cronbach’s a Conscientiousness Am always prepared Pay attention to details Get chores done right away Like order Follow a schedule Am exacting in my work Leave my belongings around (R) Make a mess of things (R) Forget to put things back in their proper place (R) Shirk my duties (R) Cronbach’s a Extroversion Am the life of the party Feel comfortable around people Start conversations Talk to a lot of different people at parties Do not mind being the centre of attention Do not talk a lot (R) Keep in the background (R) Have little to say (R) Do not like to draw attention to myself (R) Am quiet around strangers (R) Cronbach’s a Neuroticism Get stressed out easily
0.573 0.657 0.466 0.485 0.712 0.477 0.626 Deleteda 0.520
0.673 0.761 0.574 0.588 0.802 0.587 0.718 Deleteda 0.628
0.696 0.856
0.788
0.509 Deleteda 0.478 0.353 0.516 Deleteda 0.384 0.322 0.471
0.692 Deleteda 0.651 0.519 0.708 Deleteda 0.534 0.466 0.618
0.335 0.730
0.479
0.585 0.535 0.699 0.728 0.499
0.688 0.625 0.756 0.804 0.593
0.765
0.833
0.662 0.484 0.577 0.419
0.743 0.579 0.679 0.511
0.871 0.501
0.608
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APPENDIX (Continued ) Worry about things Am easily disturbed Get upset easily Change my mood a lot Have frequent mood swings Get irritated easily Often feel blue Am relaxed most of the time (R) Seldom feel blue (R) Cronbach’s a Openness Have a rich vocabulary Have a vivid imagination Have excellent ideas Am quick to understanding things Use difficult words Spend time reflecting on things Am full of ideas Have difficulty understanding abstract ideas (R) Am not interested in abstract ideas (R) Do not have a good imagination (R) Cronbach’s a
0.309 0.678 0.526 Deleteda 0.508 0.725 0.728 0.490 0.608 0.847
0.402 0.762 0.643 Deleteda 0.624 0.818 0.824 0.617 0.702
0.627 0.365 0.642 0.462 0.506 Deleteda 0.612 Deleteda
0.747 0.537 0.811 0.621 0.659 Deleteda 0.791 Deleteda
Deleteda Deleteda 0.780
Deleteda Deleteda
R, reversed item. a Items were deleted if the item-to-total correlation or factor loadings fell below 0.3 threshold.
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CHAPTER 7 LEADING WITH A SMILE: THE INFLUENCE OF MANAGERS’ LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOR ON THE EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE OF EMPLOYEES AND CUSTOMERS Ronit Kark and Hana Medler-Liraz1 Evidence over the last two decades has shown that transformational leadership is an influential mode of leadership associated with high levels of individual and organizational performance (e.g., Barling, Weber, & Kelloway, 1996; Dvir, Eden, Avolio, & Shamir, 2002). Leadership effectiveness is critically contingent upon the ability to affect the emotions of their followers (e.g., Ashkanasy & Tse, 2000; Bass, 2002; Fox & Amichai-Hamburger, 2001; George, 2000; Zhou & George, 2003). According to Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee (2002): ‘‘Leaders have always played a primordial emotional role. No doubt humankind’s original leaders – whether tribal chieftains or shamanesses – earned their place in large part because their leadership was emotionally compelling y The leader acts as the groups’ emotional guide’’ (p. 5). Although recent work has often highlighted the importance of emotions in leadership processes, the literature has paid limited attention to the mechanisms underlying leaders’ influence on followers’ emotions. Recent developments in the field of emotions in organizations provide new concepts and
Functionality, Intentionality and Morality Research on Emotion in Organizations, Volume 3, 177–198 Copyright r 2007 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1746-9791/doi:10.1016/S1746-9791(07)03007-6
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measurements to understand and study emotions, including emotional intelligence (EI) (e.g., Mayer & Salovey, 1997), emotional labor (e.g., Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993; Morris & Feldman, 1996, 1997), and bounded emotionality (e.g., Martin, Knopoff, & Beckman, 1998; Mumby & Putnam, 1992). These theoretical developments may be helpful in understanding the impact leaders can have on followers’ emotional experiences and behavior outcomes. The current paper draws on leadership theory (e.g., Avolio, Bass, & Jung, 1999; Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995) and recent theories of emotions in organizations. Its aim is twofold: first, to understand how leaders affect followers’ emotional experiences, and second, to chart the ways in which followers’ different emotional experiences affect their ability to maintain satisfactory service interactions with customers and to further influence customers’ emotions. We outline a theoretical framework suggesting that leaders can intentionally influence emotions at the workplace having a proximal effect on followers’ emotional experiences and a distal effect on customers’ emotional and service experiences. More specifically, we argue that leaders’ behavior (i.e., transformational leadership) can affect followers’ emotional experiences (i.e., emotional labor and bounded emotionality). This reduces followers’ sense of emotional exhaustion and enables followers to display positive affectivity (PA) toward customers. These displays then elicit positive emotions among customers. This chapter presents theoretical guidelines that combine notions from a number of related areas of studies on emotion in organizations. More specifically, it is aimed at shedding light on the effects leaders (i.e., managers) have on different types of emotional experiences in their followers (i.e., employees). These different types of emotional experiences in organizations (i.e., emotional labor and bounded emotionality) have received limited or no attention to date in the leadership literature. By applying several recent concepts from the emotion literature jointly a more in-depth picture can be obtained of the ways in which they interact to effect followers’ emotions and behavior and related service outcomes. This more comprehensive exploration and understanding of the underlying processes of emotional influence should ideally also promote greater emotional well-being among service employees and improve customer service interactions.
TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP In the early 1980s, the term ‘‘new leadership’’ was used to describe and categorize a number of new approaches to define leadership; one of the most
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important being transformational leadership. Transformational leadership is presented in the literature as different from transactional leadership. Whereas transactional leadership is defined as an exchange of rewards for compliance, transformational leadership is defined as transforming the values and priorities of followers and motivating them to perform beyond their expectations (Yukl, 1998). Transformational leadership enables followers to transcend their own self-interests for a collective higher purpose, mission, or vision and to exceed performance expectations. Transformational leaders communicate a compelling vision of the future, provide symbols, and make emotional appeals to increase awareness of mutual goals, encourage followers to question traditional ways of doing things; and treat followers differently but equitably on a one-to-one basis (Avolio et al., 1999). Previous research has shown that these transformational behaviors are related to leadership effectiveness (Lowe, Kroeck, & Sivasubramaniam, 1996). Researchers have employed a variety of terms to describe transformational leadership, such as charismatic leadership, inspirational leadership, and visionary leadership. These terms reflect the emotional effect that transformational leaders are presumed to have on their subordinates. Although various works have shown that transformational leadership is related to followers’ trust in the leader (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, & Bommer, 1996), identification (Kark, Shamir, & Chen, 2003), worker satisfaction (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), and frustration and optimism (McCollKennedy & Anderson, 2002), only a few studies have directly investigated the effect of transformational leaders on their followers’ emotions
FOLLOWERS’ EXPERIENCE OF EMOTIONAL LABOR AND BOUNDED EMOTIONALITY Transformational leadership is said to engender a positive emotional experience in followers. This section focuses on two distinct types of emotional experiences in organizations that can be used to explore this claim: emotional labor and bounded emotionality.
EMOTIONAL LABOR Emotional labor is generally defined as the act of expressing organizationally desired emotions during service transactions (Ashforth & Humphrey,
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1993; Hochschild, 1983). Morris and Feldman (1996, 1997) defined emotional labor more broadly as the effort, planning, and control needed to express organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions. They conceptualized the emotional labor construct along four dimensions: frequency of emotional display, attentiveness to required display rules, variety of emotions to be displayed, and emotional dissonance – psychological strain experienced when there is a discrepancy between emotions felt and those expressed – which many researchers view as a distinct effect of emotional labor. Other authors who started with Hochschild’s (1983) concept of emotion management suggested different dimensions for emotional labor based on how emotion work is done. The two main management strategies emerging from this literature are surface acting (i.e., engaging in behavioral change) and deep acting (i.e., engaging in cognitive change) (Grandey, 2000; Hochschild, 1983). In surface acting, employees modify behaviors by suppressing or faking expressions (Brotheridge & Lee, 2002; Grandey, 2000). When engaging in deep acting, employees modify behaviors through internal change; this involves changing cognition through perspective taking or positive refocus (Grandey , Dickter, & Sin, 2004). The enactment of emotional labor is thought to be associated with a range of consequences, some of which are potentially functional and others dysfunctional for the individual and the organization. On the one hand, Hochschild (1983) contended that emotional labor can have positive outcomes by helping to promote organizational goals. In his study on bill collectors, Sutton (1991) suggested that training for emotional labor and display rules might be beneficial for employees, since they would be equipped to cope with the unpleasant feelings evoked by rude or otherwise difficult clients and with emotive dissonance when it arises. Ashforth and Humphrey (1993) suggested that emotional labor may make interactions more predictable, help workers avoid embarrassing interpersonal problems, and thus help reduce stress and increase satisfaction. In addition, a person pretending to have positive emotions by showing ‘‘phony’’ smiles may end up displaying true smiles due to facial feedback mechanisms. Moreover, the display of fake positive emotions may nevertheless cause the customer to smile in return. The employee may then develop true positive feelings over the course of interaction (Zapf, 2002). On the other hand, emotional labor may have negative outcomes for employees. Mann (1999) reviewed some of these including general dissatisfaction, estrangement between self and true feeling, feeling ‘‘robotic’’, role overload, lack of work identity, and burnout. This is likely to lead to deterioration in the quality of service, high job turnover, low morale, physical
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exhaustion, and other health problems (Maslach & Jackson, 1981). Most of the variables studied as the antecedents of emotional labor are related to the task, such as task routineness (Morris & Feldman, 1996, 1997) and job autonomy (Rafaeli & Sutton, 1989). Leadership behavior has not been studied as an antecedent of emotional labor. Affective Events Theory (AET – Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) posits that effective leaders can shape the affective events that determine employees’ attitudes and behaviors in the workplace. According to this approach, effective leaders provide regular small uplifts such as positive feedback and inspiration, which serve to partially alleviate the daily strain experienced by employees. As a consequence, employees experience positive emotional states, and are therefore more likely to engage in positive behaviors and express positive attitudes. In a qualitative study, Dasborough (2006) found support for this notion. Leader behaviors were sources of positive or negative emotional responses in employees. Her findings suggest that leaders who behave in ways that show respect to followers and inspire them, and leaders that give rewards and recognition are likely to evoke positive employee emotions. This implies that leaders who behave in a transformational manner are likely to elicit positive emotions among their followers. Furthermore, leaders’ support and consideration can also decrease any negative emotional balance and contribute to a positive spiral of emotions. Thus, when supported by the leader, employees are more likely to exhibit positive emotions to customers (e.g., smile and be kind), and are likely to experience less emotional labor and negative effects of emotional labor (i.e., emotional dissonance and emotional exhaustion). When employees feel the leader is providing them with a meaningful, attractive, and ideological vision they can identify with, they are perhaps more likely to perceive the more difficult aspects of their work more positively. Another factor that can affect employees’ emotional experiences is the leader’s emotional skills. Although there is interest in the study of leadership and EI, research in this field is still in its early stages. Previous theoretical writings suggest that leaders who are high in EI may be more effective than leaders who are low in EI (George, 2000). Ashkanasy and Tse (2000) claim that the key elements of EI bear some resemblance to what is required of a transformational leader. Research findings show that some aspects of EI (e.g., self-awareness), positively relate to transformational leadership (Atwater & Yammarino, 1992; Sosik & Megerian, 1999; Bass, 2002). Bass’s (2002) review of the literature showed that aspects of EI were found to positively correlate with the frequency with which individual leaders are seen as transformational (e.g., Atwater & Yammarino, 1993; Howell & Avolio,
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1993; Ross & Offermann, 1997). According to Bass’s work, EI contributes to the transformational leader’s ability to inspire and build relationships with followers. Goleman et al. (2002) depict emotionally intelligent leaders (those who are skilled in displaying positive emotions) as affecting followers by their contagious influence. Dasborough and Ashkanasy (2003) found that leaders who displayed EI behavior were more adept at managing negative events than other leaders. Since the leader has a role in creating the emotional environment, it is likely that leaders high in EI, who behave in a transformational manner, will contribute to a reduced experience of emotional labor and to the spontaneous display of positive emotions in their employees. Thus, according to the theories and studies presented above, it is hypothesized here that: Hypothesis 1. A negative relationship will be found between transformational leadership and emotional labor experienced by the followers.
BOUNDED EMOTIONALITY Mumby and Putnam (1992) introduced the concept of bounded emotionality as a new approach to the problem of emotional control in organizations. The concept of bounded emotionality refers to an alternative mode of organizing in which nurturance, caring, community, supportiveness, and interrelatedness are fused with individual responsibility to shape organizational experiences. According to this definition, bounded emotionality has various defining characteristics, including: (1) spontaneously emerging work feelings, suggesting that work feelings should emerge spontaneously from the performance of tasks and not be ascribed organizationally, (2) tolerance of ambiguity, a component permitting contradictory feelings, positions and demands to coexist, (3) heterarchy of values, i.e., enacting value priorities must depend on individual preferences and not solely on organizational values, (4) integrated self-identity and authenticity, contending that a person can have a work experience of being ‘‘authentically oneself’’, (5) community, namely that one purpose of enacting bounded emotionality is to facilitate strong feelings of community among organizational members, and (6) intersubjective limitations, suggesting that emotional expressions should be bounded or constrained in order to function effectively in ways that are sensitive to other people’s subjectivity (i.e., emotional needs and competencies).
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Mumby and Putnam (1992) argued that emotional labor is reduced when emotional norms are embedded in relatedness. Rather than developing procedures to produce phony smiles and prevent the display of authentic emotions, training programs might help employees to develop their individual response styles (e.g., skills in listening, negotiating, and understanding feelings). This, they asserted is more liberating than turning them into emotional robots. Using qualitative data from a large private sector corporation, Martin et al. (1998) explored the bounded emotionality approach and found considerable evidence of the enactment of bounded emotionality. Two additional qualitative studies undertaken in a feminist organization (Ashcraft, 2000) and in two all-female organizations (Gayle, 1994) also found support for the theoretical viability of the concept of bounded emotionality. To date, there has been little research on this concept and on the antecedents that can contribute to the development of a bounded emotionality environment. Leaders are known to affect their followers by providing a role model for their followers to emulate (e.g., Kark & Shamir, 2002). Since transformational leaders are attentive to their followers’ emotions, are considerate, express their authentic emotions, tolerate a sense of ambiguity, and behave in ways which elicit a sense of community among followers, these behaviors are likely to provide a role model for followers to mimic. Thus, through the process of role modeling leaders may promote followers’ experience of bounded emotionality. Recently, a new leadership approach that incorporates transformational and ethical leadership has focused on the concept of ‘‘authentic leadership’’ (Avolio, Gardner, Walumbwa, & May, 2004; Avolio & Gardner, 2005; Gardner, Avolio, Luthans, May, & Walumbwa, 2005). Avolio et al. (2004) define authentic leaders as ‘‘persons who have achieved high levels of authenticity in that they know who they are, what they believe and value, and they act upon those values and beliefs while transparently interacting with others’’ (p. 802). Authentic leaders build credibility and win the respect and trust by encouraging diverse viewpoints and building networks of collaborative relationships with followers, and thereby lead in a manner that followers recognize as authentic (Avolio et al., 2004). Such leadership does not only display authentic behaviors, but may also display authentic felt emotions. Thus, if transformational leadership somewhat overlaps with the concept of authentic leadership, it is likely that transformational leaders, who are perceived by followers as behaving in an authentic manner and displaying their authentic felt emotions, will contribute to their followers’ ability to display their spontaneous felt emotions, and can elicit experiences of bounded emotionality in their followers. Moreover, leaders’ behavior and
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relationships with followers can limit the sense of emotional labor and dissonance in that they promote spontaneously emergent work feelings, a sense of authenticity, and tolerance of ambiguity. Therefore, according to the theories presented above, it is hypothesized that: Hypothesis 2. A positive relationship will be found between transformational leadership and followers’ experience of bounded emotionality. Hypothesis 3. A negative relationship will be found between bounded emotionality and emotional labor experienced by the followers.
EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION Emotional exhaustion reflects a state of emotional and physical depletion and fatigue that is considered to be the main component of job burnout (Maslach & Jackson, 1981; Wright & Cropanzano, 1998). Emotional exhaustion is argued to be a type of strain that results from workplace stressors (Cropanzano, Rupp, & Byrne, 2003; Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Schaufeli, 2001). Research has linked emotional exhaustion to a variety of ailments, including physiological problems, depression, family difficulties, and a general breakdown in feelings of community (Kahill, 1988; Maslach & Leiter, 1997). A growing body of research has shown that emotional exhaustion can also have major consequences for organizations. For example, exhausted workers manifest lower levels of commitment, a greater likelihood of seeking employment elsewhere (Lee & Ashforth, 1996; Wright & Cropanzano, 1998), and lower levels of job performance and organizational citizenship behavior (Cropanzano et al., 2003). The stressful nature of service work has been well documented (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002; Maslach, 1978; Singh, Goolsby, & Rhoads, 1994). Front-line service workers (e.g., call center workers) often work in shifts, receive low pay, and occupy relatively low status positions in the organizational structure. Moreover, these employees typically possess low levels of job autonomy, and are subjected to high demands in terms of the number of customers with whom they are expected to interact and continuous readjustment to new customers (e.g., Grandey & Brauburger, 2002; Wharton, 1993; Deery, Iverson, & Walsh, 2002; Dormann & Zijlstra, 2003; Holman, 2003). Thus, service jobs fit the ‘‘high stress’’ job category in the ‘‘demand-control’’ model of job strain (Karasek, 1979) as suggested by others (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002; Grandey & Brauburger, 2002).
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Previous studies have shown that turnover rates in front-line service workers are very high (e.g., Holman, 2003; Dormann & Zijlstra, 2003). This suggests that such work is likely to lead to high levels of employee emotional exhaustion. Two factors that increase the stress of service work are negative events and low job autonomy (Grandey & Brauburger, 2002). Negative events create a discrepancy between display rules and emotions, and thus elicit stress during service work. One type of negative event is rude, aggressive, or hostile behavior on the part of customers that is directed toward service employees (Grandey, et al., 2004; Maslach, 1978). This type of conflictual interaction with customers has been found to relate to burnout and stress (Allan & Gilbert, 2002; Grandey et al., 2004; Grandey, Tam, & Brauburger, 2002; Maslach, 1978). A recent exploratory study has found that participants who had been exposed to customers trained to be undeserving, impolite, disrespectful, inarticulate, and informationally unclear, perceived higher levels of interactional injustice, which led them to exert higher levels of emotional labor than participants who were exposed to customers trained to be more fair (Rupp & Spencer, 2006). The extent of job autonomy is another situational factor that is believed to influence the strain of service workers (Grandey & Brauburger, 2002; Spector, 1986). In a study of American and French employees who had contact with the public, Grandey and colleagues found that workers with high levels of job autonomy had less burnout as a result of regulating emotional expressions than those with low autonomy (Grandey, Fisk, & Steiner, 2005). A sense of control makes work demands less stressful (Karasek, 1979). According to AET (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), when supported by the leader, employees are more likely to exhibit positive emotions and experience less emotional labor. Since a transformational leader is likely to decrease negative events, employees should experience positive emotional states, and are therefore more likely to better manage customers’ aggression and limit the adverse effects of negative events, thus reducing the risk of emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, a leadership style that encourages followers to question traditional ways of doing things can be characterized by a higher level of autonomy, independence, and control at work. According to Karasek’s (1979) demand-control model this can further decrease service employees’ sense of emotional exhaustion. Therefore, we propose that Hypothesis 4. Transformational leadership will be inversely related to emotional exhaustion.
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EMOTIONAL LABOR AND EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION According to Grandey (2003) emotional labor may create emotional exhaustion for two main reasons. The first involves the experience of tension from emotional dissonance. The second is the draining of resources due to the effort invested in the process of emotional display (Hochschild, 1983; Wharton, 1993). While displaying certain expected emotions, an individual may experience emotional dissonance due to the discrepancy between expressions of emotions and inner feelings. Earlier studies have found that emotional dissonance is associated with emotional exhaustion (e.g., Abraham, 1998; Morris & Feldman, 1997). Later studies have found that emotional labor is also related to emotional exhaustion (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002; Grandey, 2003). Furthermore, functioning on a deeper plane (i.e., deep acting), which entails modifying internal emotional states, requires attention and effort (Grandey, 2000). The use of cognitive and energy resources has been found to lead to a sense of emotional exhaustion (Grandey, 2003). In addition emotional labor is a form of control (Van Mannen & Kunda, 1989), through which individuals are used in order to promote managerial interests. Control of emotions occurs when feelings are treated as organizational commodities, when intimate and private feelings are appropriated to public domains and are co-opted to achieve organizational goals. Thus, engaging in emotional labor strips away the individual experience, the relational context, and the intimacy that typifies the expression of personal feelings. This results in alienation and fragmentation of the individual, estrangement from one’s emotions, and feelings of selling one’s own emotions for a wage (Hochschild, 1983; Mumby & Putnam, 1992). The lack of control over one’s own feelings in conjunction with the sense of alienation from one’s integrated self is likely to lead to emotional exhaustion. We contend that the employees’ experience of emotional labor is likely to mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and emotional exhaustion. More specifically, transformational leader will decrease employees’ sense of emotional labor and subsequently will decrease their emotional exhaustion. Therefore we suggest that: Hypothesis 5a. Emotional labor will be positively related to emotional exhaustion. Hypothesis 5b. Emotional labor will mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and emotional exhaustion.
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BOUNDED EMOTIONALITY AND EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION In contrast to the possible increase of emotional exhaustion among employees due to the effect of emotional labor, bounded emotionality is likely to decrease followers’ sense of emotional exhaustion. According to Mumby and Putnam (1992) conception of bounded emotionality: ‘‘ywork refers to the process through which the individual maintains control over his or her own physical, mental, and emotional resources to perform task activities, while simultaneously recognizing the extent to which organizations are the sites of ‘linked fates’ (i.e., social collectives in which individuals coordinate their activities both to maintain community and to achieve organizational goals). Thus, a sense of community is vital to the maintenance of integrated self-identities’’ (p. 476). While emotional labor creates a feeling of fragmentation of self and alienation from the self, organizations that incorporate norms of bounded emotionality strive to preserve the integrated self-identity of organization members. Control over one’s job (and emotions) as well as a network of social support (a sense of community) have been found to positively contribute to the reduction of stress and its adverse outcomes (e.g., Adler, 2002; Cohen, 2001; Karasek, 1979; Seeman, 1996; Uchino, Cacioppo, & Kiecolt-Glaser, 1996). Since the emotional sensation of employees experiencing bounded emotionality is that of control over their persona and emotions, and that of belonging to a community, relatedness, and an integrated authentic self which can display spontaneously emerging work-related feelings without emotional dissonance, bounded emotionality is likely to contribute to employees’ well-being and counter emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, leaders with developed emotional skills who facilitate quality relationships with their followers are likely to contribute to followers’ sense of bounded emotionality, and this in turn should limit their sense of emotional exhaustion. Employees are likely to experience bounded emotionality when they have strong and meaningful bonds with their managers. Authentic work feelings emerge from ongoing task-related process and social activities rather than from organizational control (Sandelands, 1988). These work feelings, which are spontaneous and emergent and are not directed to particular instrumental goals, are outgrowths of a relationship in general (Mumby & Putnam, 1992) and more specifically can be the outcome of transformational leadership behavior. When managers and employees have high-quality connections they freely share emotional experiences, and their initial sense of anonymity gives way to feelings of community, through
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the development of mutual affection, cohesion, and coherence of purpose (Mumby & Putnam, 1992; Turner, 1974; Zurcher, 1982). Therefore we propose that: Hypothesis 6a. Bounded emotionality will be inversely related to emotional exhaustion. Hypothesis 6b. Bounded emotionality will mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and emotional exhaustion.
FOLLOWERS’ EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE AS AFFECTING CUSTOMERS’ EMOTIONS Interactions between service employees and customers have been a focal point of both theory and research. Various studies have found that positive affective displays in service interactions have a positive effect on customer loyalty (Hochschild, 1983), customer positive affect, and customer service quality perceptions (Goodwin & Smith, 1990; Pugh, 2001). Moreover, customers’ perceptions of service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty have a close relationship with organizational sales and profits (Schneider, White, & Paul, 1998). Since previous work has clearly demonstrated the contribution of positive affective displays to organizational outcomes, strong norms exist regarding which emotions service workers should and should not reveal to their customers (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993; Hochschild, 1983; Rafaeli & Sutton, 1987). However, an employee who becomes overly emotionally involved in interactions with customers does not have enough resources to replenish those emotional resources. Subsequently, this can lead to lower performance and negative feeling about themselves and their work (Wegge, Wecking, & Van Dick, 2005). There is empirical support showing the negative impact of emotional exhaustion on job performance (Cropanzano et al., 2003; Wright & Bonett, 1997; Wright & Cropanzano, 1998). Several studies have reported that customer verbal aggression is linked to employee exhaustion, poor work attitudes, and withdrawal behaviors (Deery et al., 2002; Dormann & Zapf, 2004; Grandey et al., 2004). Moreover, customer verbal aggression predicted employee exhaustion beyond the effect of organizational verbal aggression, and this finding could not be explained by dispositional negative affectivity (NA) or the frequency of customer contact (Grandey & Kern, 2005). Therefore, we claim that the stressful nature of service work makes it difficult to display positive emotions during service. Thus,
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Hypothesis 7a. Emotional exhaustion will be inversely related to the display of positive emotion by employees during his interaction with the customer. Research on interpersonal emotion processes has shown that a person or group display of emotion can influence the emotions or behavior of another person or group through the conscious or unconscious induction of emotion states and behavioral attitudes (Schoenewolf, 1990). Several studies have found support for emotional contagion in the service context. Goleman et al. (2002) described situations in which the rudeness of customer service employees elicits negative emotions among customers. Pugh’s (2001) research has shown that exposure to an individual expressing positive or negative emotions can produce a corresponding change in the emotional state of observers and affect their evaluation of service quality. Doucet (2004) found that a hostile behavior of service provider affects customers’ mood. Based on the previous research, it is hypothesized that Hypothesis 7b. The display of positive emotion by employees will be positively related to the display of positive emotions by customers.
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH The conceptualization of leadership and emotional theories presented here and summarized in Fig. 1 portrays leadership as a source of influence which can have a proximal effect on followers’ emotional experience and a distal effect on customers’ emotional and service experience. Focusing on the effects of transformational leaders, the framework outlined in this paper suggests that transformational behavior can provide a positive emotional experience to followers. Leaders’ support and consideration can decrease followers’ experience of emotional labor and its outcomes (e.g., stress, burnout, emotional labor, etc.) and can contribute to followers’ experience of bounded emotionality (e.g., promoting spontaneously emergent work feelings, a sense of authenticity, tolerance of ambiguity, etc.). Due to emotional contagion processes, we further suggest that the capability of transformational leaders to form high quality relationships with their followers and their ability to shape a work context in which followers experience positive emotions is likely to be duplicated into similar follower–customer relationships. Thus, leaders who behave in a transformational manner will form a positive emotional environment for their
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Transformational Leadership
Leader's Behavior H2
The emotional experience of the employee
Bounded Emotionality H6b
H6a
H1
+
− Emotional Labor H5b
H3
− +
−
−
H4
H5a
Emotional Exhaustion
− H7a Employee's positive display of emotion + H7b The emotional experience of the customer
Fig. 1.
Customer's positive display of emotion
The Effect of Transformational Leadership on Followers’ and Customers’ Emotional Experience.
followers, which will have a contagious influence on followers’ behavior with customers. These hypotheses suggested in this paper highlight the importance of emotions to leadership processes. It contributes to the limited literature that deals with the underlying mechanisms by which leaders affect followers’ and create an emotional atmosphere which elicit positive emotions among followers and customers. One of the significant facets of this framework lies in obtaining a better understanding of the direct effects (i.e., on followers) and indirect effects (i.e., on customers) leadership can exert on emotions. These three different levels of emotional effect and contingency (i.e., leader– employee–customer) have not been previously studied and chart an
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important direction for future research that will further our understanding of the underlying emotional influence of leaders on organizational effectiveness. Moreover, the attempt to look simultaneously at the effects of several concepts from the emotion literature (e.g., emotional labor and bounded emotionality), which have not been thought of in conjunction in the past, can enable a more complex understanding of the ways in which they interact to effect followers’ emotions and behavior and related service outcomes. Finally, the relationships hypothesized in this paper have practical implications. A grasp of the underlying processes of emotional influence can promote service employees’ emotional well-being as well as improve customer–service interactions. Positive emotional contagion experienced by group members improves cooperation, decreases conflict, and increases perceived task performance (Barsade, 2002). Thus, a leader creating a positive emotional environment is likely to help achieve these goals not only at the individual level, but also at the group, unit or organizational level. Furthermore, if leaders are able to affect the group atmosphere and create a sense of positive emotions and a wider acceptability for authentic displays of emotions, the leaders may affect the interactions among the team members offstage. Thus, if certain behaviors are allowed to be expressed offstage, enabling employees to vent and regain their energies, this may subsequently effect their behavior on stage (while needing to give service to customers) enabling the employees to present the expected positive emotions more easily. We have offered some propositions to guide further research of these processes. In addition, we have raised certain issues that merit attention in future studies. First, The framework suggested in this chapter argued that leaders can influence followers’ and customers’ emotions for the benefit of creating an organizational context that promotes both employees’ wellbeing as well as higher levels of customer service. We assume that a part of this emotional influence is intentional and aimed at achieving better organizational outcomes. However, future research will have to determine whether leaders are likely to manipulate followers’ and customers’ emotions intentionally and consciously or whether this form of influence is a nonintentional and non-conscious process. This will further determine if leaders’ emotional influence is a behavior that can be developed among mangers’ in leadership training programs. Second, the hypotheses suggested above are focused on leaders’ behaviors and their effects on followers. However, affective and emotional processes have an influence in both directions – top down and bottom up. Thus, followers are also likely to contribute to the dynamics suggested in this paper. According to Shamir and Howell (Shamir & Howell, 2000; Howell & Shamir, 2005),
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leadership and followership may both play an active role in forming mutual relationships. Therefore, followers’ characteristics such as dispositional differences regarding affective experiences (PA or NA), can also play a role in the creation of an emotional state in the workplace and thus subsequently affect their leader’s behaviors. For example, recent findings show that PA and NA are related to emotional dissonance at work (Grandey, 2000; Zapf, 2002). Empirical research has found that high PA followers are often in a good mood and, as a consequence, they are able to better suppress less negative emotions (e.g., induced by rude customers) than low PA followers. This results in lower levels of emotional dissonance (Wegge et al., 2005). Since emotional dissonance relates to low morale, physical exhaustion, and other health problems (Maslach & Jackson, 1981), it is likely that such outcomes will affect the leader’s behavior and the quality of his/her relations with followers. Future research needs to address whether followers’ dispositional differences regarding affective experiences have an influence on the leader–member dynamic relationships and on the bounded emotionality characteristics of the organization. Third, research on emotional contagion has shown that exposure to an individual expressing positive or negative emotions can produce a corresponding change in the emotional state of the observer (Pugh, 2001). Therefore, the theoretical framework suggests that the display of positive emotion by employees should be positively related to the display of customer positive emotion. Since recent work on customer-related stressors has found that verbally aggressive customers are a potential source of emotional dissonance and burnout (Dormann & Zapf, 2004; Grandey et al., 2004; Barsade, 2002), it seems warranted to examine the role of customers, especially aggressive ones, in diminishing a leader’s influence. Thus, since the follower is caught in the middle between the aggressive customer (who influences through emotional contagion processes) and his/her leader (who influences through emotional skills, leadership behavior and high quality relationship), future studies should focus on understanding under what circumstances the leader’s influence on followers can be reduced by customer’s emotions and behavior. Fourth, emotional labor requires more exploration. A dramaturgical approach to service delivery suggests that this emotional labor acting takes two forms; namely surface acting, which is ‘‘painting on’’ affective displays (or faking), and deep acting, which is modifying inner feelings to match expressions (Grandey, 2003; Hochschild, 1983). Grandey (2003) found that the type of the acting (surface or deep) mediates the relationship of workers’ job satisfaction and affective delivery. It would be of interest to further understand the effects of leadership on followers’ emotional labor by focusing on
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surface acting versus deep acting, as well as to study how deep versus surface acting relates to the emotional experience of bounded emotionality. Thus overall, the conceptual framework proposed in this paper should contribute to a greater understanding of the mechanisms by which leaders affect followers’ and customers’ emotions, as well as other related outcomes (e.g., sales outcomes, organizational profitability, and employees and customers well-being), and may provide valuable directions for future empirical studies.
NOTE 1. The authors contributed equally to this paper.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT We are grateful to the Israel Science Foundation for financial support (Grant No. 984/05).
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CHAPTER 8 EMOTION MANAGEMENT IN CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE: ‘‘SMILE TRAINING’’ IN JAPANESE AND NORTH AMERICAN SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS Aviad E. Raz and Anat Rafaeli ABSTRACT This paper offers a cross-cultural examination of emotion management in two service organizations: a Japanese specialty shop and a chain of grocery stores in the US. Building on an overview of service culture in the US and its domestication in Japan, we provide an analysis of the two organizational case studies, focusing on their common initiation of a ‘‘behavior campaign,’’ its normative character, perceptions, and repercussions. The paper concludes by focusing on the comparative aspect of the analysis, locating the organizational management of emotions in the context of national culture, and focusing on the organizational use of broader emotional blueprints of socialization related to collectivism and individualism, such as ‘‘shame’’ (in Japanese culture) and ‘‘guilt’’ (in North American culture).
Functionality, Intentionality and Morality Research on Emotion in Organizations, Volume 3, 199–220 Copyright r 2007 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1746-9791/doi:10.1016/S1746-9791(07)03008-8
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The First World shift from manufacturing to service has attracted much economic, political, and sociological attention. According to Daniel Bell (1973), ‘‘postindustrial’’ society begins when employment in tertiary industries, such as the service sector, exceeds 50 percent of the total workforce. This process took place in the US in the 1960s, and reached Japan in the 1980s (Sano, 1995, p. 40). For employers, part-time labor offers savings in wages, a solution to labor shortages (of permanent workers), and flexibility in responding to fluctuations in the work pace and in the demand for a product or service. For employees, the opportunity to work on a part-time basis accommodates needs to earn supplemental income without disturbing a focus on family or school. Employers, in turn, generally cite these attitudes to justify the low pay and dead-end nature of part-time work. The service sector has high rates of part-time employment as well as turnover.1 Such institutional conditions call for a specific organizational culture. Service should involve courtesy, and it therefore requires emotion management. Many companies in the North American service sector have developed forms of emotion management as a hallmark of their service culture (for a review, see Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993). The service sector has become a fertile ground for the emergence and crystallization of normative controls for the proper display of emotions. This paper offers a cross-cultural examination of emotion management in two service organizations: Tokyo Dome (a Japanese specialty shop) and a chain of convenience stores in the US. The paper is in three parts. First, we provide an overview of emotion management in the US and its domestication in Japan. We also explain the importance of studying emotion management in crosscultural perspective. The ensuing part provides a synopsis and analysis of the two organizational case studies. The paper concludes with a comparative analysis, analyzing the organizational management of emotions in the context of national culture.
EMOTION MANAGEMENT IN THE US AND JAPAN In The Managed Heart, Arlie Hochschild (1983) coined the term ‘‘emotion management’’ to describe the work of flight attendants in Delta Airlines. Emotion management, as defined by Hochschild (1979), is a transmutation of three basic elements of emotional life: emotion work, feeling rules, and social exchange. These elements are part of everyday emotional life, but employees of service companies are taught to manage them in a specific way. The formalization of service production (human interaction included)
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brought about recognition of the importance of emotion management. The global diffusion of emotion management in service organizations has followed what George Ritzer (1996) called ‘‘McDonaldization.’’ This process, which not surprisingly bears the name of a fast-food chain, features such basic elements as efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control. As Robin Leidner (1993, p. 82) noted, ‘‘McDonald’s pioneered the routinization of interactive service work and remains an exemplar of extreme standardization.’’ The McDonald’s formula has proved successful around the world. The keyword is turnover – of customers, products, and front-line workers. Turnover in the service industry in the US (about 60 percent annually) is the highest of all employment sectors.2 The need to deal with the high turnover rate has generated an emphasis on ‘‘design’’: the engineering of an efficient service transaction (cf. Shostack, 1987; Czepiel, Solomon, & Surprenant, 1985). Management often sees this transaction as the one stable framework in a world of rushing customers and temporary employees. The logic of high customer turnover promoted a return to Taylorism and its ‘‘efficiency expertise’’ and an emphasis on work standards and assembly lines (Kelly, 1982), which in turn also evoke high employee turnover. The influence of the introduction of part-time and temporary workers is particularly pronounced in Japan, where the traditional ‘‘three pillars’’ of Japanese-style management – seniority, lifetime employment, and enterprise unionism – are all limited to regular (or full-time) workers. In general, the part-time labor market has grown considerably in Japan, particularly with the increased entry of unmarried and, later, married women, into the paid labor force, usually as part-time workers and usually into the retail and service sectors (Ichino, 1989; Ro¯ do¯ sho¯ , 1996). To many Japanese managers, the introduction of a North American style service culture was a ‘‘fall from grace.’’ Traditional service in Japan, the argument goes, developed in intimate, one-on-one situations. Traditional service professionals, in this view, served apprenticeships and received many years of training and were consequently committed to and took pride in their work (Takahashi, 1994). However, the ideology of self-cultivation through work, still very much alive in Japan, has diminished and faded in many contemporary Japanese service organizations, particularly in the context of part-time employees. The story of Japan’s incorporation of the service manual in the 1980s is a replay of Japan’s domestication of scientific management in the 1920s and 1930s. In both cases, lip service to the beautiful customs of tradition was coupled with pragmatic implementation of imported managerial systems of control (Raz, 2002).
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While emotions have been equated with individual intentionality by philosophers (Goldie, 2002) and psychologists (Griffiths, 1997), this equation cannot be presumed absolute or taken for granted. It is not our intention here to discuss the ‘‘true’’ or ‘‘correct’’ nature of emotions, but we do propose that when individual emotions reflect an organization’s intentionality – i.e., when employee emotions are managed by the organization – this is likely to produce, in an individualistic culture (such as the US), a dissonance between the cultural ideal of emotional intentionality and the organizational scripting of emotions at work. This is because Western socialization regards emotions as individual, voluntary, and intentional. The standardization of service smiles has therefore depreciated their value, leading to the negative connotations of the idea of ‘‘smile training’’ in the US. Karl Albrecht and Ron Zemke (1985), the prophets of service management, for example, warn readers away from smile training: By all means, let’s use training y But let’s not insult our employees with ‘‘smile training’’ or ‘‘be nice’’ training. Let’s treat them like adults (1985, pp. 181–182).
The ‘‘Disney University’’ (training center) was similarly disdained by Schickel for ‘‘training employees in the modern North American art forms of the frozen smile and the canned answer delivered with enough spontaneity to make it seem unprogrammed’’ (1968, p. 318).3 Some North American workers indeed respond to ‘‘smile training’’ as a form of deskilling that promotes alienation (Van Maanen, 1989, 1991). Critical North American sociologists, from Hochschild to Ritzer, regard service management as a hegemonic program that subjects individuality and emotion to organizational structure and instrumental rationality. In contrast, ‘‘smile training’’ as a method was readily implemented by Japanese managers and workers alike (Raz, 1999), probably facilitated by a local, pre-existing cultural construction of ‘‘the smile’’ as the primary mask of emotion (Matsumoto, 1996, p. 60).4 The Japanese, in general, responded to ‘‘smile training’’ not as being shallow and infantile, but as being too weak rather than too strong. Trainers and managers look down on service culture (sa¯bisu bunka) and criticize North American service manuals as lacking discipline and formal character training (Raz, 1999, 2002). Such criticism has not stopped managers and trainers in the Japanese service industry from using service manuals. However, this explanation over-emphasizes the power of globalization and downplays the local motivation of Japanese employers. Pragmatic implementation of an imported rationalization model, which paid lip service to the ‘‘beautiful local customs’’ of tradition, did not begin with service
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delivery. A similar process characterized the Japanese domestication of scientific management (Taylorism), German-inspired work councils, quality control, and many other Western models. In other words, the domestication of the service manual is not merely an outcome of the globalization of North American management in late capitalism, but also denotes a particular propensity of the Japanese for cultural hybridization. Indeed, the service manual changed as it was culturally translated to fit the local surrounding culture in Japan, as the ensuing analysis will show. Moreover, the local context of implementation dressed the implemented changes in local attire. In Japan, the need for the service manual was thus justified, for example, within the local construction of a divide between the ‘‘old’’ (regular) and ‘‘new’’ (part-time) generations of employees. The smile has become such a standard hallmark of global service culture, that cultural differences in the motivation and social structuring associated with it have been ignored. Hochschild’s path-breaking study was the first to use the term emotion management. Yet Hochschild’s generalizations, in a manner typical of the studies that followed her, were biased towards the national culture of the US although being presented as universal. Little research focused on emotion management in cross-cultural perspective. This provides a point of departure for our study. As we hope to show, sociological and managerial constructs of emotions at work, such as ‘‘emotional dissonance’’ and the ‘‘false self,’’ are not universal responses to the commercialization of human feelings in late-stage capitalism. Rather, they are cultural responses conditioned on certain discourses. We illustrate this claim through an analysis of emotion management in a cross-cultural context by focusing on two service organizations, one in the US and the other in Japan.
‘‘SERVICE WITH A SMILE’’: A NORTH AMERICAN CONVENIENCE STORE CHAIN The emotions at work in a large nationwide chain of convenience stores in the US provide us with a point of departure for the ensuing comparison.5 Inspired by Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman’s In Search of Excellence (1982), the human resources staff of the corporation which owns the chain conducted a chain-wide effort to enhance employee courtesy. The human resources staff had revised the employee handbooks and the classroom training provided for new recruits. The changes consisted of instructing the clerks to greet, smile at, establish eye contact with, and say ‘‘thank you’’ to
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every customer. Store managers received new handbooks, entitled, for example, ‘‘Effective Customer Service Increases Sales,’’ and containing lectures, readings, and suggestions for role-playing exercises and group discussions. In addition, clerks were informed that ‘‘mystery shoppers’’ would be used to observe them. In some regions, clerks who were found displaying the required good cheer received a $25 bonus. The corporation also held a contest, costing over $10 million, in which store managers could qualify to enter a drawing for a $1 million if their clerks consistently offered good cheer to customers. The corporation also awarded a bonus of 25 percent of base salary to regional managers when a high percentage of sales clerks in the stores in their region were observed displaying good cheer to customers. These individual incentives are themselves a cultural difference (or a difference in organizational culture) between the United States and Japan. In Japanese service organizations (including the Tokyo Dome discussed below) no individual incentives were offered to managers or employees. The campaign was evaluated one year after its initiation. ‘‘Incognito participant observers’’ (or mystery shoppers, as they are called in the industry) who coded clerks’ behavior during transactions with customers measured the display of emotions. The firm did not hire special observers for this task but used members of its human resources staff. Observers visited each store in pairs. They acted independently and did not communicate with each other while in the store. They walked around the store for a few minutes, noting how well it was stocked and whether the clerk was wearing a nametag and a clean smock and then walked to the magazine rack and observed the clerk’s behavior from that vantage point. The observers then selected a small item like a candy bar and stood in line, continuing to note the employee’s behavior toward customers until they paid for the item and left the store. The amount of time in each store varied from 4 to 12 min. The company required its clerks to express a ‘‘warm outward demeanor’’ during transactions with customers. The performance of this requirement was formalized in handbooks and manuals that broke the task down into four required elements: greeting, thanking, eye contact, smiling. This is Taylor’s ‘‘job analysis’’ at work: finding the one best way of performing a particular task by dividing it into its basic units. In fast-food chains, for example, front-line employees are similarly instructed that every transaction with a customer must follow seven orderly stages: (1) establishing eye contact, (2) greeting, (3) taking the customer’s order, (4) calculating the bill and informing the customer, (5) collecting the order, (6) collecting the payment,
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and (7) saying ‘‘thank you.’’6 These checklists epitomize Taylor’s scientific management. The checklist deals with ‘‘devotion’’ in the form of ‘‘design’’ with no implicit or explicit ideology of self-fulfillment. In the North American chain of grocery stores described by Rafaeli and Sutton (1990), the formalization of feeling rules was matched by the quantitative measurement of displayed emotions. Only ‘‘Hello,’’ ‘‘How are you today,’’ or another polite phrase at the outset of a transaction was considered a greeting. Anything else was not coded as greeting. In thanking the customer, the clerk had to use the word ‘‘thank’’ or a derivative. A smile was defined as a noticeable uptwisting of the lips. A direct gaze by a clerk counted as a sincere attempt at eye contact. For each store, a score was computed for each of the four emotional expressions by calculating the proportion of transactions in which the behavior was displayed to the total number of transactions coded. Observers also gathered data on the average length of the lines at the cash registers, and the criterion variable used in the study was total store sales. Multiple regression analyses then determined the relationship between the display of positive emotion and total store sales. The direction of the observed relationship, however, contradicted the original hypothesis – higher levels of displayed positive emotion were associated with lower, rather than higher levels sales. Qualitative observations as well as a modest positive relationship between line length and sales and a modest negative relationship between line length and the display of positive emotions, led the researchers to consider the difference between busy and slow settings as predictors of the emotions displayed by employees (see also Rafaeli, 1989). It transpired that convenience store clerks in this chain were less courteous when the store was crowded and busy. During busy times, the researchers describe a case of a customer asking ‘‘Can I please have a plastic bag for my merchandise?’’ and a sales clerk answering: ‘‘Lady, we don’t have time for your ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ Can’t you see how busy we are? Just say what you want.’’7 Sales clerks, as well as many of their store managers, hence contended that friendliness and warmth were unnecessary when customers ‘‘just want to get in and out quickly.’’ We do not have data about the aftermath of the campaign. However, we believe that the contest did continue for a while. Top management is not quick or happy to dispose of the ideal belief that smiles bring good sales, or to accept the premise that employees cannot smile and be highly efficient at the same time. But Rafaeli and Sutton suggest that at the store level both managers and employees shared a tacit agreement that revenues depend on speed rather than courtesy.
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THE WARM HEART: TOKYO DOME’S BEHAVIOR CAMPAIGN It would have been interesting to compare the North American study with the organizational culture of 7/Eleven, Japan. 7/Eleven convenience stores entered Japan around 1974, where they were operated by the Ito-Yokado Company under license from The Southland Corporation. The convenience store (conbini) has been a huge success in Japan. 7/Eleven Japan actually got so big and rich it took over the American chain in 1990. However, we did not have access to Japan 7/Eleven stores. Moreover, the conbini are quite different from the American stores as nearly all franchise operations are typically held by a married couple and do not rely on company-owned distribution centers but rather uses Japan’s regular wholesale network (for additional comparisons, see Sparks, 1995). Our comparative analysis here concerns The Tokyo Dome Corporation, founded in 1936 as Ko¯ rakuen Company, Ltd., for the purpose of constructing and operating Japan’s first baseball stadium (Tokyo Dome Corporation, 1995, p. 1). In the early 1950s, the Ko¯rakuen amusement park – Japan’s first urban amusement park – was built near the stadium. The company was a pioneer in the leisure industry and a typical representative of that tradition (Yoshimitsu, 1970). In 1995 Tokyo Dome had 1,200 regular employees and about 5,000 part-timers. On November 16, 1992, Tokyo Dome’s Service Division launched a ‘‘Behavior Campaign.’’ A special memorandum, issued that day, described the campaign’s objective of establishing a service code and the schedule for implementing that code. Every three months another theme would be declared. The first was ‘‘the smile,’’ to be followed by greetings (aisatsu), appearance (midashinami), behavior (taido), manner of speech (kotobazukai), cleanliness, safety, customers’ complaints, and so on. Three videos were produced for the campaign, and various newsletters, posters, stickers, and telephone cards were published. The campaign has been reenacted every year. The posters for the 1994 campaign were especially impressive. On one, half of the poster was occupied by a large title in gold, reading: ‘‘Declaration of Customer Principles’’ (kasutoma-nizumi sengen). Below the title, over a white illustration of the Tokyo Dome, a diagonal question printed in yellow challenges the reader: ‘‘Are you customanist?’’ (kasutomanisuto ka? This is a Japanese idiom that can be explained as ‘‘customer-oriented’’). Below that, a salariiman (the Japanese term for regular – ‘‘salaried’’ – worker) standing in an Uncle-Sam-Wants-You pose, points his finger at the viewer.
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The Behavior ‘93 poster was more modest. A vertical sentence printed in black over a background of red hearts stated: ‘‘To begin with, warm heart’’ (hajimari wa, wo¯mi ha¯to). The extensive use of katakana North Americanisms (‘‘warm heart,’’ ‘‘behavior campaign,’’ ‘‘customer’’) as well as ‘‘Japanized Americanisms’’ (e.g., ‘‘customanist’’) illustrates how the new service culture is being reproduced and marketed in Japanese organizations. Wo¯mi ha¯to (‘‘warm heart’’) is not an original Japanese idiom. It is a borrowed Americanism, rendered in katakana. Tokyo Dome’s ‘‘warm heart’’ is a diluted version of the sunao na kokoro (‘‘naive heart,’’ the traditional ideal of cultivating selfhood through work). Like Taylorism in the 1920s and quality control circles in the 1960s, ‘‘CS’’ (customer satisfaction) and ‘‘service manuals’’ are the North American imports of the 1990s in Japan. Tokyo Dome’s Behavior Campaign coincided with a labor-management incident that took place in 1994, after the campaign had been under way for two years. The backdrop for the incident can be briefly described.8 In 1994, sales at the Tokyo Dome baseball specialty shop outside the stadium fell 10 percent, despite an increase in the number of visitors to the games (Tokyo Dome Corporation, 1995). Yamada (a pseudonym), then a young regular employee of Tokyo Dome, who was appointed to study the problem, told the first author in a personal interview that [y] There was a problem with service, because shop personnel did not say ‘‘irasshaimase’’ (please come in) or ‘‘arigato¯ gozaimashita’’ (thank you very much) – at least they didn’t say it when a large number of customers was coming in after the baseball game in Tokyo Dome.
As described earlier, this was also the situation in the above-mentioned North American case, where shop staff also changed their service attitude according to number of customers in line. However, while the workplace reality was similar – probably reflecting the structural similarities in global service culture – the managerial reaction to it was different. In the Japanese company, a meeting was organized with invited representatives from a consulting company, the department chief, several Tokyo Dome service trainers, and the shop’s staff. The employees were embarrassed in public by a video presentation of their behavior. Yamada (personal interview with first author): They were really ashamed. I edited the video, pasting in all the material that showed unprofessional behavior among the workers. Many lowered their heads because they were too ashamed to look at it.
The word used by Yamada as well as by the shops’ front-line employees was hazukashii, a semantically loaded term in Japanese that may be translated as
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‘‘embarrassed’’ or ‘‘ashamed.’’ According to McVeigh (1997, p. 53), such a reaction makes sense in Japan, where ‘‘breaches in manners, besides eliciting embarrassment, may also cause shame.’’ Yamada’s disciplinary strategy vividly exemplifies the Japanese ‘‘culture of shame’’ (to be further discussed later) as an important emotional vehicle for fostering commitment. Following the video presentation, the department chief announced an ‘‘off-JT’’ seminar for the shop’s personnel. ‘‘Off-JT’’ (off-the-job training) refers to unpaid, mandatory, after-hours training. The seminar consisted of voice lessons, training in the correct use of greetings, role-playing, and the use of scripts to explain goods. In addition, customers were invited to leave their feedback on customer-satisfaction forms placed in the shop. Employees were also informed that as part of the new behavior campaign, a competition is to be held during the year with a group bonus for the winning shop. A year later, business had returned to normal. In 1995, Yamada and another trainer involved in the campaign were transferred to other jobs, following the usual career-development procedures for white-collar workers in Japan, and lost contact with the shop. Apparently the shop’s revenues increased enough to direct the management’s attention to other, more pressing problems.
SMILE TRAINING IN CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE The two organizations we studied were different in many terms. The North American business is a convenience store chain, whereas the Japanese business is a single specialty store. However, we believe that the comparison is still valuable for highlighting the interplay between a global service culture of emotion management (‘‘smile training’’) and its local scripting and interpretation by workers. Although emotion management takes place in both US and Japanese service organizations, its practices, ideologies, and forms of reception are very different. Thus, our analysis illustrates how organizational and workplace cultures are two different entities that operate in the context of a local, surrounding national culture. ‘‘Managerial Culture’’ denotes the inter-connectedness of values, norms, and artifacts within managerial ideology. ‘‘Workplace Culture’’ stands for the on-the-job and offthe-job implementation (or subversion) of organizational values and norms, as well as their interpretation by workers. ‘‘Surrounding Culture’’ consists of the relevant values and norms that play a role in broader, cultural processes of socialization. The concept of ‘‘culture’’ is extended in this way to serve as an independent variable.
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From the perspective of ‘‘cultural contingency’’ suggested by Lincoln and Kalleberg (1990, p. 18), organizations seek to maximize their fit with their cultural environments as a way of enhancing their viability. In Japan, for example, the company is regarded as a microcosm of Japanese society and an important agent of adult socialization in national values (Yoshino, 1992). However, although values may constitute management’s favorite rhetoric, it is through labor disputes and status conflicts that ‘‘ideologies’’ are translated into (or resisted by) shop-floor norms. In addition, the rhetoric of values may be a facade that masks shop-floor realities. The ‘‘fit’’ that contingency theory speaks of can therefore be part of the ideological facade maintained by management. It is therefore important to separate, phenomenologically and analytically, between the realities of managerial culture and workplace culture.9 This threefold view of culture – managerial, workplace, and surrounding – can be modeled by three overlapping circles (see Fig. 1). Each circle denotes analytically different yet practically interrelated discursive fields. There is no order of precedence here, but rather a dynamic interplay. The first circle represents the formal Managerial Culture: the ideology of
Surrounding Culture
Managerial Culture Ideologies and procedures prescribed by management for work group and individual behavior
Normative socialization
Actual group and individual norms Defining cues from work setting and target person Feedback from target person
Workplace Culture
Fig. 1.
Managerial Culture, Workplace Culture and Surrounding Culture, and the Emotional Transaction.
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management and its top–down messages, systems, norms, and artifacts. Managerial culture often serves as the reference point or the point of departure for the study of workplace cultures. The second circle encompasses Workplace Culture – the everyday practices of organizational life as well as their interpretation from the workers’ point of view. These two circles, which together constitute the organizational culture, only partially overlap. The common area designates congruity and acceptance, or ‘‘devotion’’ in management parlance. The second circle also provides room for ‘‘countercultures’’ and for workers’ subversion of managerial ideology. A model suggesting a structure somewhat similar to these two circles is advanced by Martin (1992). Martin described the processes of ‘‘cultural differentiation’’ and ‘‘cultural fragmentation’’ as going against the dominant view in managerial/functionalist rhetoric of organizational scholars of one integrative organizational culture (e.g., Trice & Beyer, 1993, 1984). ‘‘Cultural differentiation’’ in Martin’s analysis represents consistency and consensus within sub-cultures (specific departments, or jobs, for example), but differences between different units (departments or jobs). ‘‘Cultural fragmentation’’ represents the loss of consistency and consensus in organizations as a whole. However, Martin’s conceptualization does not refer to the surrounding culture, and is therefore insufficient for analyzing the differences between the two cases on which we focus here. In addition, in Martin’s view different perspectives on organization culture represent the researcher’s subjective experience in the field. We suggest here that these perspectives manifest the complexity and multilayered nature of organizational culture. To integrate the influence of surrounding culture, our model includes a third circle which represents the values, norms, and socialization of the local culture, which can influence both acceptance of and resistance to managerial culture. Although Fig. 1 can be regarded as depicting a particular situation of partial overlapping of all three circles, in reality the relations among the three circles are dynamic and their borders always depend on the situation being studied. The model can be used as a framework that enhances analysis of case studies and allows for comparison among cases. We show here how it can help analyze ‘‘smile training’’ or emotion management in the service industry. We first show how smile training can be generally analyzed through the model, then follow this up with a specific analysis of the cases presented here. In the general context of smile training, the circle of managerial culture represents the North American management system, which has become part
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of a global service culture. Managerial culture prescribes three major facets of emotion management: (1) emotion as an objective expression – the smile; (2) emotion as employee motivation – the expectation that front-line service employees display certain (positive) emotions; and (3) emotion as social structure – the institutionalized practice of smile training as part of standard human resource management. The circle of workplace culture in regards to general smile training is evident in the Japanese domestication and implementation of service training. Smiles are universally reproduced as an expression, but the reproductions are domesticated. A Japanese manual for smile training differs from a French or North American counterpart, for example. The motivation of Japanese employees fits local considerations of the ‘‘smile’’ as public performance which means, for example, that Japanese front-line employees are less concerned, compared with their North American counterparts, about ‘‘being phony.’’ This is a part of Japanese employees being more receptive, in general, of the concept of ‘‘show’’ and ‘‘keeping up appearances’’ (Raz, 1999). The third circle, of surrounding local culture, builds on the construction of the ‘‘smile’’ in a particular culture. In Japan, for example, the smile is a primary emotion mask, implying that Japanese culture might be a source of positive socialization for emotion management at work. The cultural construction of emotional masks such as the smile also affords expression, social glue, and motivation. Using the model to analyze the two cases of smile training in North America and Japan offers further illuminations on the content and logic of similarities and differences in the two cases. In North America, the managerial culture embodied the expressed rationale of service management in and its implementation through training workshops, for example. The workplace culture circle embodied actual performance and interpretation of the smile campaign by store managers and employees. There was only partial overlapping between these circles since store managers and employees performed and interpreted correctly the campaign during non-busy times only. The third circle – surrounding culture – involves both the expectations of customers and the norms and values of North American culture with regard to smile training and emotion management. Comparing the clerks at Tokyo Dome and in the US convenience store finds that both were less courteous when the store was crowded and busy. Like the Tokyo Dome clerks, US clerks contended that friendliness and warmth were unnecessary when customers ‘‘just want to get in and out quickly.’’ Can we therefore conclude that the norms of the surrounding
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cultures give way, in the service context, to a common global culture, whose ‘‘carriers’’ are service employees? We suggest that the answer is not clear-cut because in spite of common features, there are also important cultural differences, for example in the reaction of customers and management. In both studies and countries – Japan and the United States – store pace emerged as the cause, rather than an effect, of expressive behavior. For both North American and Japanese sales clerks, the number of customers in the store provided a cue for workplace norms about expressed emotions. But customers and managers did not perceive this cue in the same way in the two countries. In the US study, during busy times both clerks and customers tacitly agreed that the expression of pleasant emotions was not essential, whereas both clerks and customers tacitly expected that pleasant emotions should be expressed during slow times. In Tokyo Dome, however, customers appeared to expect clerks to be courteous even during busy times. Similarly, Japanese managers reacted differently than US managers to what they saw as the failure of clerks to display positive emotions during busy times. US managers tacitly accepted that at busy times customers are inputs to be processed rapidly. US managers also tacitly encouraged employee to forgo the programmed courtesies during busy times by redefining the resulting behavior as being more ‘‘task-oriented’’ rather than being ‘‘less friendly.’’ While managers and marketing people had put up an argument that it would not cost employees anything to just smile as they do the work, in practice in the US there was compromise of the displayed emotion during busy times. Apparently, for managers and clerks in US convenience stores, efficiency overrides courtesy during busy times. Conversely, managers in Japan, at the Tokyo Dome Corporation, thought that clerks should always remain courteous. The off-JT that followed the slack of smiling during busy times, with its shaming sanctions, was uniquely Japanese, much as the individualized bonus system initiated in the 7/11 stores was uniquely North American. The annual behavior campaign practiced in Japan, although a ritualized importation of a North American organizational practice, was also strikingly different from the individual incentives used by the North American corporation. That front-line employees in Japan failed to display the expected courtesy in busy times, in a manner quite similar to their counterparts in North America, contradicts the argument that Japanese employees are always and already ‘‘pre-socialized’’ for emotion management because of their surrounding local culture. Japanese managers in Tokyo Dome noted that such ‘‘loose behavior’’ could be expected of part-timers, who do not share the
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mature attitude of regular workers, which reflects the organizational construction, characteristic of Japan, of a clear division between part-timers and regular workers. This construction also reflects a generational divide in Japan, since part-timers, who are usually younger, are often called ‘‘the new breed’’ (shinjinrui) by older-generation managers and trainers. These differences demonstrate how emotion management can serve to integrate or differentiate employees from their work group. The display rule variation in different national cultures suggests that one culture (old-timer culture in Japan) may rely more explicitly on certain social conventions than another culture (part-timers or young people in Japan as well as all US employees. People make sense of another person’s behavior through their perceptions and interpretations of the other’s intentions, a process arguably mediated by emotional intelligence (Dasborough & Ashkanasy, 2002). The rejection by US service employees of the organizational message to be courteous at all times may be due to the individual and group interpretation which saw a conflict between this management and other facets of management training – the drive for efficiency and profit. In the Japanese case, the management ideology of consistent smiling including at busy times was clarified through the meeting, off-JT, and the renewed ‘‘behavior campaign.’’ This message was apparently understood and internalized by employees. In interviews conducted with Tokyo Dome’s part-time employees after the campaign, no one expressed any inconvenience with the prescribed emotion management. To the contrary, many of the respondents explained their previous failure as stemming from a misunderstanding of the rules. Managerial culture and workplace culture have thus been re-aligned. This differed from the US case, where the rules dictated by top management were subverted by the ‘‘rules’’ established within the workplace culture of stores. The only inconvenience expressed in Japanese interviews had to do with the shameful experience the situation had created, an emotional process completely non-existent in the US case.
SMILE TRAINING IN THE CONTEXT OF INDIVIDUAL (GUILT) AND COLLECTIVIST (SHAME) CULTURES We have described and compared two examples of organizational explicit and intentional attempts to influence the emotions of work group members and of the work group as a whole. These examples contain similar processes
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of intentional affective induction – smile training – which reflect the globalization of ‘‘service culture.’’ The examples also demonstrate differences in the local effect of surrounding culture. The interplay between emotions at work and broader cultural processes of socialization is our goal here, and deserves further elaboration. Anthropology has centered on the Japanese ‘‘culture of shame’’ as the main emotional vehicle for fostering commitment to social values (Benedict, 1946; Sakuta, 1967; Doi, 1973)10 as a part of a distinction maintained by anthropologists between shame and guilt cultures (for a review, see Creighton, 1990). This distinction draws on the basis of which emotion, shame or guilt, was used as the primary social sanction, wherein Japan was characterized as a shame culture. Shame is an emotion holding an outward orientation, a consciousness of others and what they will think and feel (Tangney, 2003; Smith & Ellsworth, 1985). One can be shamed by one’s family, neighbors, friends, co-workers, and managers. That many Japanese white-collar employees take only half the paid holidays to which they are entitled has been explained, in this vein, as reflecting an unwillingness to be seen as less committed to his job than his co-workers. In this sense, committing a wrong in Japan involves losing face in relation to others. Shame represents an ethnocentric, relativist universe of morality, a cultural blueprint manifested itself in the organizational shaming of employees in the meeting. For example, the organizational manager invited representatives of an external consulting company to the meeting with the explicit intent (related later to the author of the study) of increasing the shame imparted upon employees. Both the senior manager and the consultant noted after the meeting that there was no intent to involve the consultants in the off-JT activities. The representatives were doing Yamada a favor, since shame in public (i.e., in the presence of outsiders) is more effective in Japanese eyes. In contrast, guilt cultures (such as, arguably, the US), use individual guilt as a primary means of maintaining social order.11 In guilt cultures, one is expected to answer to oneself and to control one’s own behavior so that it conforms to the behavior one expects from others. This is probably why both managers and employees in North America were not ashamed to justify, in interviews with the researchers who were clearly affiliated with management, a relapse to ‘‘no-nonsense’’ task-oriented behavior during busy times. A logic of a ‘‘guilt culture’’ also explains the use of personal incentives to promote the required emotional display: The employee is not sanctioned to feel ashamed for not displaying the required demeanor, but rather, because of a presumed Protestant Worth Ethic might feel guilty for losing a bonus.
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A focus on guilt rather than shame may also be the reason for no public sanction following the improper behavior of front-line employees in the US, as opposed to the intense public sanction in Japan. Such public sanctions would strongly contradict the individualist US culture. In the use of shame and guilt we therefore see the social properties of culture evident in the emotions that implicitly govern any case of ‘‘emotion management.’’ A motivational and a narrative (or ‘‘deep-structure’’) issue of emotion underlies each case: A motivation to not feel ashamed in Japan and to not feel guilty in the US. The mere use of shame which is powerfully effective in Japan would be highly inappropriate in the US. ‘‘Emotion management’’ is therefore offered by our analysis another general interpretation that integrates the context of national culture. To North American scholars inspired by Hochschild’s work, emotion management has negative connotations. This is because, as Charles Cooley (1922) argued, emotions in Western culture are a sign of the ‘‘I,’’ the personal/ private side of identity, rather than of the ‘‘me,’’ the social/public aspect of identity. Organizational attempts to manage employee emotions are therefore viewed as a violation of the border between the private (‘‘I’’) and the public (‘‘me’’), which generates anti-feelings (Rafaeli & Worline, 2001). For Mumby and Putnam (1992, p. 472), ‘‘Emotional labor, similar to bounded rationality, alienates and fragments the individual.’’ Hochschild (1983) speaks about ‘‘being phony’’ and about the alienation from a ‘‘false self.’’ Ferguson (1984, pp. 53–54) comments that ‘‘the flight attendant’s smile is like her makeup,’’ continuing to note that, ‘‘like prostitutes, flight attendants often estrange themselves from their work as a defense against being swallowed by it, only to suffer from a sense of being false, mechanical, no longer a whole integrated self.’’ Reactions of US sociologists to the commercialization of human feeling have been framed in previous work without recognition of a cultural context. Lacking is an acknowledgement that such criticism can and does hinge on cultural assumptions. The reactions of North American researchers, employees, and managers to emotion management should be read in the broader context of local surrounding culture. The US and Western view of emotion as ‘‘something natural rather than cultural, irrational rather than rational, chaotic rather than ordered, subjective rather than universal, physical rather than mental or intellectual, unintended and uncontrollable, and hence often dangerous’’ (Lutz, 1990, p. 69) is not absolute or culture free. The importance of recognizing the cultural contingencies, as evident in our analysis, becomes important only when an emotion management effort in another culture is examined. In Japan, emotion has typically been viewed
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as part of culture (society, the ‘‘me’’) and not just nature (personality, the ‘‘I’’) because, as (Matsumoto, 1996, p. 63)12 described, Japanese culture depends, in large measure, On the strict adherence by all members to display rules y. Many native Japanese believe that one cannot be considered a ‘full-fledged’ Japanese until one has mastered the art of managing one’s emotions in all aspects of life.
Emotion norms in Japan overpower gender differences since both men and women are equally regarded as emotional beings.
SUMMARY Feeling rules exist in every culture. Yet their implementation and manifestation can vary between cultures. Japanese culture differs from North American culture in the type and extent of its feeling rules and in the way that organizations implement emotion display rules. Western society tolerates, and to a great extent fosters, a wide range of emotional behavior, even though it also has its display rules. The Japanese allow less variety and are less tolerant of transgression of display rules. The resulting appearance of conformity in Japanese emotional display does not mean however that individual variation or transgression does not exist. Nor does it mean that the Japanese do not experience emotions (Matsumoto, Kudo¯, Schere, & Wallbott, 1988; Scherer, Matsumoto, Wallbott, & Kudoh, 1988). Yet for Japanese, men and women alike, emotion socialization involves different processes of controlling emotions – in public rather than in private, through shame rather than through guilt, for example. Future research on emotion in organizations should incorporate the influence of these broader, national scripts for a further understanding of emotional behavior in organizations.
NOTES 1. Service industries account for the significant expansion in the number of parttime workers. Over 40 percent of the part-time workers found in the US and Canada are engaged in service sector activity (Robinson, 1993; somewhat lower estimates are given by Polivka, 1996). In the early 1990s, three sectors, restaurants and hotels, retail trade, and education accounted for more than 44 percent of part-time jobs. In retail trade, 71 percent of part-timers were employed in sales clerk or service worker occupations; in restaurants and hotels, 79 percent of part-timers were employed in service worker occupations; in education, nearly half were in clerical and service
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worker jobs (Robinson, 1993). However, it is possible that researchers have focused disproportionately on lower-paid, less-skilled temporary workers rather than highly paid independent contractors, thus highlighting the prevalence of part-time work in service organizations (Smith, 1997). 2. In Japan, data collected by Japan’s Ministry of Labor on the job tenure of parttime workers (workers whose contracted working hours are shorter than those of regular workers), show that 30.8 percent of male part-timers and 25.8 percent of female part-timers keep a job for one to three years; the next largest group (20 percent of the men, 12.5 percent of the women) stay for six months to one year. The average job tenure of part-time workers is 2.6 years for men and 4.3 years for women (cited in Wakisaka, 1997, p. 146). 3. Schickel’s criticism of Disney is linked to the outlook of the Frankfurt School’s critical view of the culture industry. Theodor Adorno, for example, saw Disney as the site for American cultural imperialism and called it the ‘iron bath of fun.’ 4. See Ekman and Friesen (1982, p. 239) for an experiment that demonstrated that Japanese and Americans showed the same facial expressions when experiencing fear, disgust, and distress if they were alone. However, when they were in social situations, quite different expressions were evident. The Japanese covered negative emotions with a smiling mask much more often than did the Americans. 5. Discussion of the convenience stores case is based on secondary analysis of the original study (Sutton & Rafaeli, 1988; Rafaeli, 1989). At the time of the original research (1984), the chain of stores was owned by a corporation, with about 7,000 stores in the US and Canada, 36 percent of which were franchises. The research was based on observations conducted in a sample of 576 of these stores. The typical store had 8–10 part-time employees who worked in 38-h shifts (morning shift, swing shift, and night shift). 6. This break-up is taken from a McDonald’s’ training manual for front-line employees in Israel. 7. This exchange, quoted in Sutton and Rafaeli (1988, p. 473), reflects a transaction between one of the researchers and a clerk in a busy store. At this stage, the study was conducted using qualitative methods, i.e., interviewing and unstructured observations. 8. The description of the Tokyo Dome case is based on secondary analysis of the original ethnographic study, which was based on interviews and observations conducted in Tokyo during 1995–1996 and later in 2000 (see Raz, 2002). 9. In contrast, conventional theories of organizational culture hinge on a top– down, functionalist model where ‘‘culture’’ is a managerial project. In Edgar Schein’s (1990) well-known model, organizational culture is represented through ‘‘a pyramid’’ of premises, values, and artifacts. Such a view is committed to managerial functionalism and does not give much importance to workers’ voices. Organizational culture is seen as an autonomous managerial project and the role of surrounding culture is downplayed. 10. Japan as a ‘‘society of shame’’ has been discussed by both American and Japanese scholars, but fewer studies have discussed ‘‘shame culture’’ in the context of Japanese workplace cultures. One exception is Cole (1971, pp. 180–185). Others are Rohlen (1974), Roberts (1994), and Kondo (1990) who describe the ritual of the public apology (hansei), which is an important organizational practice of ‘‘shame culture.’’
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11. Some anthropologists, such as Anthony Giddens (1991), argue that it is shame, and not guilt, that characterizes the social organization of the late and modern US, because ‘‘shame bears directly on self-identity y. It is essentially anxiety about the adequacy of the narrative by means of which the individual sustains a coherent biography’’ (ibid., p. 65). This reverse picture illustrates that (1) generalizations regarding ‘‘shame’’ or ‘‘guilt’’ cultures can easily be misconstrued (Creighton, 1990), and that (2) grand theories do not merely express representations of reality but also mirror their own theoretical lineage. 12. It is no coincidence that Doi’s amae, one of the most famous psychological constructs of ‘‘Japanese mentality,’’ refers to codependence – a state of bounded emotionality.
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CHAPTER 9 INCORPORATION OF EMOTIONAL LABOR IN THE DEMAND– CONTROL–SUPPORT MODEL: THE RELATION WITH EMOTIONAL EXHAUSTION AND PERSONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT IN NURSES Ge´rard Na¨ring and Annemarie van Droffelaar ABSTRACT Nursing comprises interactions with patients which may require emotional labor. This study clarifies the relation of emotional labor with the three burnout dimensions within the context of the Demand Control Support model in nurses. We used the Dutch Questionnaire on Emotional Labor (D-QEL) to measure surface acting, deep acting, suppression, and emotional consonance. In line with other studies, job characteristics were significantly related to emotional exhaustion and surface acting was significantly related to emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. Emotional consonance, the situation where somebody effortlessly feels the emotion that is required, is related to personal accomplishment.
Functionality, Intentionality and Morality Research on Emotion in Organizations, Volume 3, 221–236 Copyright r 2007 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1746-9791/doi:10.1016/S1746-9791(07)03009-X
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The term burnout refers to a syndrome of psychological complaints in response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001). The three dimensions that characterize this syndrome are emotional exhaustion, feelings of depersonalization or cynicism, and a feeling of lessened personal accomplishment. Initially, researchers mainly identified risk factors for the development of burnout among job characteristics, but nowadays occupational and organizational characteristics receive increasing attention (Maslach et al., 2001). Although emotional exhaustion is a key characteristic of the burnout syndrome (Maslach et al., 2001), only in the last decade has an emotion perspective been used to try to understand the development of emotional exhaustion. Hochschild noted that especially in service jobs employees are often required to show certain emotions because they function to please the customer. Having to show such emotions while one is not actually feeling them or having to hide one’s own emotions when their expression is seen as inappropriate were subsumed under the header emotional labor (Hochschild, 1983). Hochschild introduced the term surface acting to refer to the display of the characteristics of an emotion that are regarded as appropriate, but are not actually felt. Deep acting describes the efforts to try to actually feel an emotion that is thought to be required. Finally, emotional consonance captures the situation where somebody effortlessly feels the emotion that is required in a certain situation. A key concept in understanding the possible effect of emotional labor seems to be emotional dissonance (Ha¨rtel, Hsu, & Boyle, 2002). Emotional dissonance refers to the discrepancy between the emotional demeanor that an individual displays and the emotions that are felt (Mann, 1999). This dissonance is seen as a separate dimension of emotional labor (Kruml & Geddes, 2000) or as an inevitable concomitant of emotional labor (Brie¨t, Na¨ring, Brouwers, & van Droffelaar, 2005; Hochschild, 1983). Affective events theory might explain the link between emotional dissonance and emotional exhaustion. In this cognitive approach, emotional dissonance leads to the perception of more hassles, which in turn leads to emotional exhaustion (Ha¨rtel et al., 2002). The non-expression of emotions is often regarded as and has been found to be unhealthy. The relationship between the suppression of emotions and cardiovascular diseases has received particular attention and a psychophysiological pathway between them has been suggested (Gross & Levenson, 1997). Recently a psychosocial pathway for the effect of emotion suppression on long-term health consequences has also been outlined (Mauss & Gross, 2004). Further, Richards and Gross (1999) documented the effects of
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emotion suppression on impaired cognitive functioning, especially memory. However, studying how pretending to have certain emotions, possibly at the cost of personal goals, might affect well-being, health, and emotional exhaustion is a much more recent phenomenon. A hypothesis regarding the effect of emotional labor on the availability of resources can easily be derived from a common definition of an emotion. Contemporary definitions of emotion regard emotions as a process (Frijda, 1986). In a so-called primary appraisal, a person confronted with a situation, consciously and unconsciously assesses the situation. The ongoing activity is interrupted and a ‘‘readiness to act’’ (Frijda, 1986) is felt, either towards or away from the situation. In this way emotions give priority to certain goals. It is during a secondary appraisal that the context is taken into account and the expression is consciously regulated. During emotional labor workers will override the expression that is the output of the action tendency (Frijda, 1986) and act in accordance with the perceived job rules. In doing so, workers may give priority to the goals of clients or patients and this may influence the availability of personal goals and of resources and may influence work-related well-being. A number of studies have explored the relationship between emotional labor on the one hand, and job stress or emotional exhaustion on the other hand (Pugliesi, 1999; Zammuner & Lotto, 2001). This resulted in evidence that emotional labor has significant relationships with burnout level (Zammuner & Galli, 2005b). Support for the hypothesized link between emotional dissonance and emotional exhaustion has also been found (Abraham, 1999). The concept emotional labor seems thus useful to gain additional insights into stress at work, but it remains unclear how relevant this relatively recent concept of emotional labor is within the context of older concepts. The model of choice for studying the relationship between job stress and well-being is the Demand Control Support (DCS) model, which has been successfully applied to the study of job-related well-being such as emotional or work-related exhaustion and burnout (van der Doef & Maes, 1999). The DCS model identifies three now classical variables: high job demands, low possibilities to regulate one’s work, and little support. It states that the combination of high job demands and low job control will result in psychological stress reactions. The model furthermore contains a so-called iso-strain hypothesis, which specifies a negative effect of the combination of high demands, low control and little social support. In order to evaluate the predictions of the model, a group of researchers carefully selected highquality studies, and concluded that there is accumulated evidence that each
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of the three variables from the DCS model causes strain and that their effect is cumulative (de Lange, Taris, Kompier, Houtman, & Bongers, 2003). These reviewers also conclude that there is much less evidence for the strain hypothesis. Another review that specifically included studies on psychological well-being concluded that there is substantial evidence for an interactive effect of demands and control, the strain hypothesis of the DCS model, in the case of burnout, but much less evidence for the iso-strain hypothesis (van der Doef & Maes, 1999). After numerous studies that were inspired by the DCS model, we can conclude that its main value is to be found in the identification of three important factors. Furthermore, the strain hypothesis seems to be true in the case of burnout. One criticism of the model is that different types of demands have not been incorporated in it (De Jonge & Kompier, 1997). As emotional labor acts as a job demand (Zapf, Seifert, Schmutte, Mertini, & Holz, 2001), it might be a useful extension of the JDC model. At present there are only a few studies that report on the relative importance of emotional labor or related concepts in comparison to the classical operationalization of demands of the DCS model. In one of these studies, the need to hide emotions predicted emotional exhaustion, and support from colleagues or supervisor had both an independent as well as a buffering effect (Ybema & Smulders, 2002). The Ybema and Smulders’ study also included emotional demand, which refers to the sustained emotional effort that is required through professional contact with other people. It also refers to the emotional impact that inevitably comes with professions where there is frequent confrontation with death and suffering as in nurses, firemen, or ambulance drivers. Emotional demand and the need to hide emotions had a strong relation with emotional exhaustion. As the latter study did not include the variables of psychological demands and control, the DCS model was only partially taken into account. In a study undertaken by de Jonge, Mulder, and Nijhuis (1999) emotional demand seemed less relevant for emotional exhaustion. Another study (Zapf et al., 2001) made clear that emotion work, a concept that is closely related to but nonetheless distinct from emotional labor, predicts a unique portion of about 3% of the variance in burnout variables. The aim of the present study is to examine whether emotional labor and emotional demand are useful extensions of the demand concept in the DCS model. We will examine this by testing the additive effects of the DCS model in predicting the three dimensions of burnout. We hypothesize that after taking into account the influence of the classical operationalizations of the DCS model, emotional labor will predict additional variance of each of the three dimensions of burnout.
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Hypothesis 1. More emotional labor will be associated with more emotional exhaustion. Hypothesis 2. More emotional labor will be associated with more depersonalization. Hypothesis 3. Less emotional labor, i.e. more emotional consonance will be associated with more personal accomplishment. Furthermore, the strain hypothesis of the DCS model for of each of these demands will also be tested. Hypothesis 4. The combination of high emotional labor with low control will be associated with more emotional exhaustion. Hypothesis 5. The combination of high emotional labor with low control will be associated with more depersonalization.
METHOD Subjects The participants were sampled from nurses with a permanent appointment working in two different hospitals in the central part of the Netherlands. In total 880 questionnaires were distributed. The response rate was 38.8%, and the final sample consisted of 88% women and 12% men, with a mean age of 38 years, SD ¼ 9.68. The mean number of years of experience in the profession was 17 years, SD ¼ 10.27, ranging from 0 to 42 years. The mean number of working hours per week was 26.9, SD ¼ 7.74, with a range of 8–40.
Materials Dutch Questionnaire for Emotional Labor (D-QEL) Kruml and Geddes identified emotive effort and dissonance as two separate dimensions of emotional labor (Kruml & Geddes, 2000). Our definition of emotional labor (Brie¨t et al., 2005) focuses on this emotive effort. We define emotional labor as the intentional internal processes that maintain a state of dissonance (as in surface acting) or resolve the dissonance (as in deep acting) and developed a questionnaire that has sound psychometric properties (Brie¨t et al., 2005). This instrument provides four scales, of which three
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measure the following varieties of emotional labor: surface acting, deep acting, and suppression. Just as Zammuner and Galli (2005a) we translated the items for surface acting and deep acting from the emotion regulation questionnaire of Grandey (Grandey, 2003) which is an extension of the Emotional Labor Scale (Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002; Brotheridge & Lee, 2003). An example of a surface acting item is: ‘‘I pretend to have the emotions I need to display for my job’’. An example of a deep-acting item is: ‘‘I make an effort to actually feel the emotions I need to display toward others’’. From the same study items, we selected items that measure emotional consonance that were taken from another study (Grandey, 1998 in Zammuner & Galli, 2005a). Best, Downey, and Jones (1997) (in Brotheridge & Grandey, 2002) developed an Emotion Requirement Scale to measure a perception of display rules but not the actual emotional labor that these rules may cause. We rephrased the items that were used to measure the: ‘‘Requirement to hide negative emotions’’ so that they ask about actually hiding anger and disgust and fear and called the hypothesized separate dimension ‘‘suppression’’. An example of a suppression item is: ‘‘I hide my anger about something someone has done’’. People apparently suppress emotions at work just as often as they fake them (Mann, 1999). Emotional consonance denotes a dimension indicating whether felt emotions call for the activation of regulatory processes (Zammuner & Galli, 2005b). A high level of emotional consonance will indicate that a person effortlessly expresses emotions that are felt and that these emotions are at the same time required for the job. An example of an emotional consonance item is: ‘‘I react to patients’ emotions naturally and easily’’. We added one deep-acting item (emotive effort) from the study by Kruml & Geddes (Kruml & Geddes, 2000). It is important to note that Grandey (2000) used a definition of surface acting that encompasses the surface acting of positive emotions as well as the suppression of negative emotions. Indeed, a person that is faking interest might at the same time suppress boredom or irritation, but the latter might also be absent. To make a distinction possible we included this measure for the suppression of negative emotions in our questionnaire. The structure of the resulting scale was tested on the scores of a sample of teachers with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The resulting comparative fit index (CFI), the Bentler–Bonnet non-normed fit index (NNFI), and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) are reported. CFI and NNFI values larger than .90 indicated that the model was acceptable (Bentler & Bonnet, 1980). Values of RMSEA smaller than or equal to .05 indicate a good fit of the model (Byrne, 2001).
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The CFA of the 4-factor model resulted in indices that varied between .90 and .93 (w2 ¼ 210.20, df ¼ 71, p ¼ .00, CFI ¼ .93, NNFI ¼ .90, RMSEA ¼ .08). The Cronbach’s alpha of the resulting scales were all high. For surface acting, a ¼ .79 (n ¼ 329), for deep acting, a ¼ .81 (n ¼ 324), for suppression, a ¼ .61 (n ¼ 331), and finally for emotional consonance, a ¼ .70 (n ¼ 330). The scale was cross validated in this sample of nurses and the four-factor structure of the scale was confirmed (Brie¨t et al., 2005). Burnout Burnout was measured with the Maslach Burnout Inventory for teachers, which was linguistically made suitable for nurses by changing students into patients (MBI-NL, (Schaufeli & van Horn, 1995)). The questionnaire consisted of eight items that measured emotional exhaustion, five items that measured depersonalization, and seven items that measured personal accomplishment. Items can be answered on a seven-point scale ranging from ‘‘never’’ to ‘‘always/daily’’. Indicative for burnout are high scores on emotional exhaustion and depersonalization and low scores on personal accomplishment. Cronbach’s a ¼ .88 for emotional exhaustion (n ¼ 329), a ¼ .67 for depersonalization (n ¼ 330), and a ¼ .78 for personal accomplishment (n ¼ 331). Social Support Social support was measured with two subscales each containing six items from the Emotional Support Subscale of the Social Support List – Discrepancies (SSL-D, (van Sonderen, 1991). All items start with the phrase: ‘‘What is your opinion about the extent to which people’’ followed by e.g. ‘‘ask you for advice?’’ or ‘‘reassure you?’’. Answers to the items are given on a four-point scale running from ‘‘I miss it’’ to ‘‘it happens too often’’. A high score indicated much support. Items from the scales ‘‘emotional support from colleagues’’ and ‘‘emotional support from staff members’’ were both included and scores added to create a general measure of support. This resulted in a Cronbach’s a ¼ .89, N ¼ 331. Control Assessment of the workers’ autonomy can be regarded as a refined measurement of the control dimension (de Jonge, Janssen, & van Breukelen, 1996). Control was measured with six items from the Maastricht Autonomy Questionnaire (MAQ) (de Jonge, Landeweerd, & van Breukelen, 1994). The MAQ measured the worker’s opportunity to determine a variety of task elements, like the method of working, the pace of work, and the work goals.
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An example is: ‘‘The opportunity that the work offers to determine the method of working yourself.’’ Answers are given on a five-point scale varying from very few possibilities to very many possibilities. A high score indicated a high level of control, a ¼ .84 (n ¼ 329). Job Demands Workload was measured with six items from the Vragenlijst Organisatiestress Doetinchem, VOS-D; [Organizational Stress Questionaire] (Bergers, Marcelissen, & de Wolff, 1986). Respondents were asked to indicate how often they experience difficult job demands on a five-point Likert scale varying from ‘‘seldom’’ to ‘‘very often’’. An example of an item is: ‘‘It so happens at work that there are few occasions where I can take it easy’’. A high score indicated high workload, a ¼ .80 (n ¼ 331). Emotional demand. The scale for emotional demand consisted of three items from a Dutch survey (Ybema & Smulders, 2002) that ask about emotional demand, emotional involvement, and emotionally difficult situations, a ¼ .64 (n ¼ 362). A sample item is ‘‘Is your work emotionally demanding?’’
METHOD OF ANALYSIS Correlations between the study variables were calculated. Subsequently, we performed three separate hierarchical regression analyses with the burnout symptoms as criterion and the predictors entered in steps. All variables were first transformed to z-scores in order to obtain correct results for standardized regression coefficients for the interaction terms (Friedrich, 1982). In the first step the control variables were entered, in the second the variables from the DCS model were entered, including emotion regulation and emotional demand. In the third step the interaction terms of demands and control were entered to test the strain hypothesis. For all tests an alpha level of .05 was used.
RESULTS Correlation of Symptoms of Burnout with Job Characteristics and Emotional Labor Correlations between the dimensions of burnout and the job characteristics and emotional labor are given in Table 1. Emotional exhaustion was
Correlations between Demographic Variables, Work Characteristics and Emotional Labor.
Variable 1. Gender 2. # of working hours 3. Age 4. Workload 5. Emotional support 6. Control 7. Emotional demand 8. Surface acting 9. Suppression 10. Deep acting 11. Emotional consonance 12. Emotional exhaustion 13. Depersonalisation 14. Pers. Accompl.
1
2
– .33 .14 .17 .02 .07 .12 .10 .007 .12 .07 .03 .16 .06 .01 .06 .10 .13 .01 .09 .10 .17 .17 .19 .03 .15
3
4
– .04 – .05 .29 .08 .21 .16 .40 .02 .17 .02 .06 .04 .08 .05 .02 .04 .54 .14 .22 .11 .005
5
– .18 .06 .07 .07 .05 .05 .27 .22 .05
6
7
8
– .09 .09 .18 – .01 .08 .17 .01 .04 .39 .06 .08 .09 .23 .35 .45 .14 .26 .38 .19 .001 .15
9
10
11
12
13
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Table 1.
– .17 – .10 .04 – .12 .29 .14 – .08 .22 .16 .49 – .04 .02 .35 .15 .20
Note: Pers. Accompl: Personal accomplishment. po.05; po.01.
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positively correlated with workload, and negatively with control and support. Furthermore, emotional exhaustion was positively correlated with emotional demand, surface acting, suppression, and deep acting. Depersonalization was positively correlated with workload, emotional demand, surface acting, and deep acting. Depersonalization is negatively correlated with support, control, and emotional consonance. A notably high correlation, r ¼ .38, is seen with surface acting. Finally, personal accomplishment is highly correlated with emotional consonance.
Regression of Symptoms of Burnout on Job Characteristics and Emotional Labor The relationship between emotional labor and burnout symptoms is explored in three hierarchical regression analyses. The results of the separate analyses for each burnout dimension are given in Table 2. The three regression analyses all show a similar pattern. In the first step, a small proportion of the variance, 1–6%, of every dimension of burnout is explained by age and gender. In the second step much more variance, from 18% to 47%, is explained by the various work characteristics. The third step, in which the interactions of the various demands with control are entered, is not significant. The regression analysis for emotional exhaustion reveals significant beta weights for workload and emotional demand. Furthermore, there are significant beta weights for surface acting, deep acting, and the absence of emotional consonance. The regression analysis on depersonalization contains a negative beta weight for support and no significant beta weights for workload and control. Emotional demand and surface acting have significant beta weights of .22 and .28 respectively. The regression analysis of personal accomplishment contains three significant predictors: control, surface acting, and emotional consonance. The absence of emotional labor, especially of surface acting is seen in nurses with a high level of personal accomplishment. In order to get an estimate of the relative importance of the emotionrelated variables in predicting dimensions of burnout, subsequent regression analyses where performed in which workload, control and support were entered in step 2 and emotional demand and emotional labor in step 3. For emotional exhaustion this resulted in an increase in R2 of 31% in step 2 and an additional 16% in step 3. For depersonalization there was an increase in
Hierarchical Regression Analysis of Predictors of Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalisation, and Personal Accomplishment (N ¼ 345).
Predictor
Dimensions of Burnout Emotional exhaustion F
b Step 1 Control variables Age Gender
1.61
R2 (change)
b
.01
F
R2 (change)
9.91
.06
.19 .13*
.06 .04
Step 2 Work characteristics
Depersonalisation
33.19
(.47)
Personal accomplishment b
1.71
11.85
(.23)
8.00
.05 .12 .01 .22
.04 .02 .15 .02
Emotional labor Surface acting Suppression Deep acting Emotional consonance
.28 .03 .08 .12
.16 .01 .04 .34
Step 3 Strain hypothesis
n.s.
.01
n.s.
(.18)
n.s.
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Note: Standardized beta coefficients are given. po.05; po.01; po.001.
R2 (change)
.14 .06
Classical Demand Control Support Workload .41 Emotional support .08 Control .05 Emotional demand .12 .29 .01 .13 .12
F
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Table 2.
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R2 of 6% in step 2 and an additional 17% in step 3. Personal accomplishment showed an increase in R2 of 3% in step 2 and an additional 15% in step 3.
DISCUSSION In line with many studies that used the DCS model, the results of the regression analyses indicate that job demand and control are significantly related to emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. A separate contribution can, however be identified for emotional labor. Surface acting is related to emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment. The relation between surface acting and emotional exhaustion is a replication of findings from other studies (Brotheridge & Lee, 1998; Grandey, 2003; Zammuner & Galli, 2005b). The major difference with those studies is that the present study established this relation within the context of classical operationalizations of demand, control, and support. We can therefore conclude that surface acting is a useful specification of the demand concept of the DCS model. As Hochschild noted more than 20 years ago (Hochschild, 1983), having to pretend certain emotions because it is seen as functional in a specific work context may come at a personal cost in terms of feeling emotionally drained or exhausted. Faking emotions is strongly related to emotional exhaustion and depersonalization in this sample of nurses. This finding adds to the evidence that surface acting in particular should be regarded as stressful (Mann & Cowburn, 2005). From our data we can not conclude which positive and wanted emotions are faked, but a survey study undertaken by Glomb and Tews (2004) revealed that the most often faked emotion is interest. Nurses may be in a situation where their tendency is to act detached or distant to a patient but at the same time they may assess that a patient expects interest. In such a situation they may choose to overrule the felt tendency. One might assume that pretending to be interested may require more energy that being effortlessly able to show real interest in accordance with a felt action tendency. It seems that we do not know much about surface acting because molecular analyses on emotions in the workplace tend to focus on unwanted and unpleasant emotions and how people deal with them (Coˆte´ & Morgan, 2002; Fitness, 2000). Our analyses indicate that the suppression of emotions may, however, be of only minor importance in understanding the development of emotional exhaustion. It is, however, possible that the effect of the suppression of emotions is masked by the effect of surface acting. People
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that report surface acting, may not be aware or may not report that they suppressed an emotion first. Studies of positive emotions can help us to unravel whether, but also how exactly surface acting leads to fatigue. Experience sampling methods or diary methods may be very useful for this purpose (Zohar, Tzischinski, & Epstein, 2003). The variables that are associated with depersonalization are surface acting and emotional demand, with corresponding beta weights of .28 and .22, indicating that they play an equally important role. Surface acting leads to more feelings of depersonalization, while the absence of acting, emotional consonance, diminishes depersonalization. From the work characteristics that we called classical only support is negatively related to depersonalization, b ¼ .12. The test of the strain hypothesis was not significant. Our study adds to the conclusion that there is only marginal evidence for the strain hypothesis, but sufficient evidence for direct effects of demand, control, and support on dimensions of burnout (de Lange et al., 2003). The link between emotional demand and emotional exhaustion substantiates similar findings in a range of 40 occupational groups (Ybema & Smulders, 2002). Having to deal with emotionally laden situations may also lead to exhaustion. In a study in human service employees, job demands and emotional demands were the variables that were most strongly related to emotional exhaustion measured after one year (van Vegchel, de Jonge, Soderfeldt, Dormann, & Schaufeli, 2004). These findings are reflected in a change in the operationalization of workload in the model. Emotional demands are presently regarded as at least as important as quantitative demands in determining workload (van Vegchel et al., 2004). The third dimension of burnout, personal accomplishment is significantly predicted by emotional consonance, with a beta weight of .34. Emotional consonance should not be subsumed conceptually under the label emotional labor. The other dimensions measure an active effort to deal with the experience or the expression of emotions and are therefore thought to contribute to stress or strain. A high level of emotional consonance is seen in the absence of such effort and is a useful extension of the nomological network or constructs related to emotional labor (Diefendorff, Croyle, & Gosserand, 2005). Emotional consonance is apparently useful in gaining an understanding of personal accomplishment. There is an increasing interest in factors that determine that people like their work and give them a feeling of competence. In recent models that focus on engagement (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004) and resources (de Jonge, Dormann, & van Vegchel, 2004) emotional consonance may play an important role.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT Mariette Brie¨t is gratefully acknowledged for her contribution to this study.
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CHAPTER 10 BUILDING A CLIMATE OF TRUST DURING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF JUSTICE PERCEPTIONS AND EMOTION Nell Kimberley and Charmine E. J. Ha¨rtel ABSTRACT Over the years, research has shown that, although there are various factors which contribute to failed change, one of the key reasons people resist change is due to the inability of leaders to convince employees to support change and to commit the energy and effort necessary to implement it. Senior management can ensure an organization is change-ready by developing and maintaining a supportive culture and climate that positively influence the emotional health and welfare of employees. Despite the obvious importance of leadership to change efforts, little previous research has investigated, holistically and in the context of major change, the relationship between senior management actions and employee responses. Furthermore, the change literature largely ignores the role that emotions play in employee responses to change initiatives. This chapter addresses both areas, and develops a model of organizational change from a justice and emotions perspective, which depicts employees’ Functionality, Intentionality and Morality Research on Emotion in Organizations, Volume 3, 237–264 Copyright r 2007 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1746-9791/doi:10.1016/S1746-9791(07)03010-6
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justice perceptions related to senior executives as affecting trust directly and indirectly, through associated emotional responses.
DO EMPLOYEE EMOTIONS MEDIATE EMPLOYEE TRUST IN THE ORGANIZATION DURING MAJOR CHANGE? Despite spanning a period of more than 50 years, the change literature is still very complex and fragmented, characterized by a diversity of opinion, practices and models. Nevertheless, most academics would agree that the key element in leading and managing change is people – those who initiate change, those who implement it and those who are the recipients of change. The extant change literature acknowledges the people factor through the examination of responses to change, the most notable of these being resistance. For decades, resistance was perceived by management as a negative phenomenon, a barrier to change often manifesting itself through counterproductive behaviours. Over the years, research has shown that the lack of successful change implementation, certainly in the Australian context, is the result of employee resistance to change, and, to a lesser extent, poor leadership and communication (Waldersee & Griffiths, 1997). Although there are various factors which contribute to failed change, one of the key reasons people resist change is due to the inability of leaders to convince employees to support change and to commit the energy and effort necessary to implement it. So what do leaders need to do to increase employees’ readiness for change? One thing senior management needs to do for an organization to be change-ready is to develop a culture and climate that are positive and supportive and that have a positive influence on the emotional health and welfare of employees. In other words, if leaders ensure that employees experience more positive emotions than negative ones, it enables resilience and openness to change (Fredrickson, 2003). The emotional states that employees experience over time at work shape both their work attitudes and behaviours (Ashkanasy & Daus, 2002, p. 78). And as Fredrickson and Losada (2005) argue, positive emotional experiences in the workplace can transform an organization, improving both individual employee’s and organizational functioning. Despite the obvious importance of leadership to change efforts, little previous research has investigated, holistically and in the context of major change, the relationship between senior management actions and employee responses.
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The purpose of this chapter is to assist organizations in understanding employee emotional and attitudinal outcomes derived from senior management behaviours, and thus, organizational practices during major change. What constitutes ‘‘major’’ or radical change is multifarious. Typically it involves restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, strategic change, cultural change, re-engineering and quality programs (Kotter, 1996). Invariably, such changes are complex, wide-ranging and have a significant effect on functions or the entire organization. Moreover, there are different types of referentspecific individuals which could be examined in the context of change, such as co-workers, supervisors and managers. Given the dearth of studies directed toward higher levels of organization, this chapter focuses on senior management (agents of the organization) as a referent. ‘‘Senior management’’ is defined by membership of an organization’s strategic and operational executive. The group would normally be comprised of the CEO, divisional heads and functional heads, all of whom contribute directly to the organization’s key strategic and business decisions (Albrecht & Travaglione, 2003, p. 8). Contemporary research into positive emotions has implications for organizational change. Often it is not the change itself which leads to negative affect and subsequent behaviours of withdrawal, footdragging, aggressive reactions, resignation, sabotage, etc. It is how change and, these days, how continuous and large-scale change are managed. By virtue of their positions, senior executives may lack the contextual insight, experience or empathy to fully appreciate the employees’ perspective in relation to change. If senior managers wish to encourage a more positive outlook toward change, they need to be aware of the types of conditions which produce positive feelings. The challenge for managers is to foster work environments which broaden, build and maintain positive feelings that give rise to how individuals think and behave. This chapter commences with a brief overview of a Model of organizational change from a justice and emotions perspective (see Fig. 1). This is followed by a discussion of social exchange theory and justice theory which underpin it. A detailed explanation of the model follows, including a discussion of organizational practices and leadership attributes as antecedents to employee perceptions of justice and trust. Finally, the chapter examines the mediating effects of emotions on employee trust during major change. The model asserts that decisions made by senior management regarding major change will influence perceptions of organizational justice by employees. Indeed, senior executives, as leaders of the organization, perform critical roles during such times. When there are significant changes to structure, culture, policies and procedures, senior executives are relied upon
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Organizational practices by senior executives:
Perceived justice:
Distributive Procedural Informational Interpersonal
Employee emotions
Organizational trust
Character attributes of senior executives: Integrity Benevolence Ability
Fig. 1.
Model of Organizational Change from a Justice and Emotions Perspective.
NELL KIMBERLEY AND CHARMINE E. J. HA¨RTEL
Communication adequacy: Causal accounts Ideological accounts Referential accounts Procedural accounts Voice/participation Respectful treatment of employees Behavior modelling
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to solve problems, resolve conflict and allocate resources (Cobb, Wooten, & Folger, 1995a). In turn, employees assess these decisions and practices in terms of fair treatment. For example, if problems occur during change, employees want to know ‘‘why an outcome discrepancy or improper action occurred’’ and who is responsible for it (Bies, 1987, p. 295). They also observe the extent to which executives act as role models, encouraging other managers to emulate fair processes and fair treatment of employees (Cobb et al., 1995a). Specific change management practices such as communication, encouraging participation, respectful attitudes toward employees and behaviour modelling influence employee justice perceptions, as too does the level of organizational support in terms tangible resources. In addition to organizational practices, the character of senior management evokes employee scrutiny and perceptions of fairness. Justice is generally referred to in the literature as a cognitive concept but its effects are both emotional and behavioural (Chebat & Slusarczyk, 2005). Research reveals that individuals who perceive that they are treated fairly will experience positive emotions, while those who perceive unfair treatment, will experience negative emotions (Chebat & Slusarcyzk, 2005; Weiss, Suckow, & Cropanzano, 1999). What is important here is not simply that emotions are influenced by fair and unfair treatment, but that there is a link between justice/injustice, trust, emotion, attitudes and work behaviour (Weiss et al., 1999). The literature suggests that when actions are perceived by employees as just, there is a greater likelihood of trust in the organization. Based on their perceptions of justice and trust, employees are more likely to hold positive attitudes toward change, to be open to change and to engage in positive behaviours such as extra role behaviours and increased performance, and are less likely to engage in counterproductive behaviours. Thus, the model posits, that in the context of organizational change, emotions mediate employee trust in the organization during major change.
A JUSTICE AND EMOTIONS PERSPECTIVE OF CHANGE In order to conduct research into emotions management and executive behaviour, a framework which considers emotional responses would be beneficial. The Model of organizational change from a justice and emotions perspective hypothesizes that, in the context of major change, employees are
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more likely to be open and affectively committed to change through positive behaviours, when the practices of senior management are perceived to be fair and high levels of trust in senior management are generated. As a corollary to this hypothesis, the emotional support and additional effort exerted by employees represents enhanced commitment to change. This model integrates theories of social exchange and justice. Social Exchange Theory The Model of organizational change from a justice and emotions perspective is predicated on social exchange theory which ‘‘views organizations as arenas for long-term mutual social transactions between employees and the organization’’ (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001, p. 182). As Wayne, Shore, and Liden (1997, p. 82) assert ‘‘employees tend to take a long-term approach to social exchange relationships at work, with the pattern of reciprocity over time determining the perceived balance in exchanges’’. Acts of goodwill on the part of the organization (or its representatives) encourage reciprocal behaviour by employees who, in turn, feel obliged to repay the favour or ‘‘good deeds’’ (Aryee, Budhwar, & Chen, 2002, p. 268). These mutual obligations are unspecified, that is, it is unclear as to what form or when reciprocation will take place (Wayne et al., 1997). The literature suggests that social exchange theory has long been used to examine the motivational basis for employee attitudes and behaviours and also suggests that ‘‘positive, beneficial actions directed at employees by the organization and/or its representatives contribute to the establishment of high-quality exchange relationships’’ (Settoon, Bennett, & Liden, 1996, p. 219). Positive social exchanges are also linked with positive emotions (Fredrickson, 2003), both of which can yield benefits for both the organization and its employees (Wayne et al., 1997). Social exchange relationships develop through a series of mutual exchanges which lead to a pattern of reciprocation. Konovsky and Pugh (1994) assert that social exchange is based on employees trusting that the other parties in the relationship will meet their obligations in the long run. Thus, relations are not predicated purely upon economic exchange but are based on mutual benefit and trust. The subsequent attitudes and behaviours of actors in the relationship are derived from an outlook of ‘‘mutual support and investment in the relationship’’ (Aryee et al., 2002, p. 262). Employees observe and interpret the behaviours of managers as indicative of the organization’s responses to them. For example, when employees
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perceive procedures as fair, they ‘‘repay the firm by forming more positive attitudes toward the overall organization’’ (Cropanzano, Prehar, & Chen, 2002, p. 328). Therefore, if actions by management are perceived positively by employees, they may reciprocate with positive attitudes and behaviours. Wayne et al. (1997) differentiate between the relationship of an employee and a supervisor, and an employee with the organization as a whole. According to the authors, while an employee may have an exchange with one supervisor, an organization comprises many individuals. Hence, the employee bases his or her feelings of obligation on the history of organizational human resource practices, such as promotion and training and development (Davidson & Friedman, 1998). The individual then assesses these practices as an indication of positive evaluation by the organization. In this way, a belief is established by the employee as to how much the organization values his or her contribution and the extent to which the organization cares about his or her welfare (Eisenberger, Armeli, Rexwinkel, Lynch, & Rhoades, 2001). Perceiving support, the employee feels obliged to care about the organization and its goals. The social exchange relationship thus may best be summarized as ‘‘Two or more actors, each of whom has something of value to the other, decide whether to exchange and in what amounts’’ (Lawler & Thye, 1999, p. 217). A study conducted by Wayne et al. (1997) found that the relationships between the employee and the supervisor and the employee and the organization, while yielding different outcomes, are related and influence one another. This occurs because the supervisor is often the source of rewards, such as salary increases, promotion or bonuses. The authors’ findings also suggested that positive relationships with the organization lead to affective commitment and organization citizenship behaviour (OCB). In the Model of organizational change from a justice and emotions perspective, the social exchange relationship involves employees and senior executives as initiators of major change, and thus in terms of the literature as representatives of the organization. Justice Theory Organizational change generates a heightened sensitivity to the fairness or otherwise of outcomes, processes and treatment. This occurs through assessments made by employees as to the quality of exchanges with their superiors and the organization as a whole, which, in turn, determines employee attitudes and behaviours in the workplace. The sequence is
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similar to that of cognitive appraisal and Affective Events Theory posited by Lazarus (1991) and Weiss and Cropanzano (1996), respectively, in that it adopts a stimulus–organism–response framework as follows: an event occurs (such as a change in organizational structure), which an individual perceives (resulting in a perception that the event was fair or unfair) and to which he or she responds (angrily and then resigns) (Greenberg & Wiethoff, 2001). Generally, the literature focuses on employees and their fairness evaluation of three types of activity: the outcomes they receive from the organization (distributive justice), formal policies or procedures by which outcomes are allocated (procedural justice) and the interpersonal treatment they receive from supervisors (interactional justice) (Saunders & Thornhill, 2003, p. 325). However, Colquitt, Conlon, Wesson, Porter, and Ng (2001) add interpersonal and informational justice suggesting that these have different correlates and that measuring them separately allows for further differences. Given the importance of communication in the context of major change (Armenakis, Harris, & Mossholder, 1993; Kotter, 1996), the Model of organizational change from a justice and emotions perspective includes the added dimension of informational justice. The following section examines four key dimensions of justice. Distributive Justice Distributive justice refers to judgments about the degree to which resources are distributed in a fair way (Daly & Geyer, 1994, p. 624). Perceptions of distributive justice arise whenever there are explicit organizational allocations and outcomes, such as redundancies, restructure, transfers and retraining, as well as the more covert distribution of power, authority, responsibility and support (Cobb et al., 1995a; Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001; Saunders & Thornhill, 2003, p. 362). In the context of change, allocations may refer to ‘‘what’’ changes and ‘‘winners and losers’’ in the allocation of resources. ‘‘Small wonder then that such resource distribution (power, prestige, authority, responsibilities, technology and plant as well as financial resources) will fundamentally affect perceptions of how fair is the change effort and as a consequence, the outcomes that result from these perceptions such as organizational commitment, trust and the willingness to accept change’’ (Cobb, Folger, & Wooten, 1995b, p. 136). In order to facilitate distribution, some form of criteria will have been used by management. Cobb et al. (1995b) suggest equitable distribution
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based on merit, equality of loss and reward, and individual need. How the criteria was used will influence employee perceptions of fairness, and as a result their perceptions of the change effort and the organization as a whole (Cobb et al., 1995a). Fundamental to the issue of distribution is the acceptance by employees of the processes leading to the development of the distribution criteria. If distributive justice is perceived as fair, high levels of trust by employees will follow (Cobb et al., 1995b). Trust is affected by the relative treatment of others, so that perceptions of inequity or unfairness lead to negative affect (e.g., anger and mistrust), particularly where an individual feels that he or she had a greater claim to an outcome than the individual to whom it was allocated. Procedural Justice Perceptions of fairness about the procedures used to arrive at change decisions are also significant (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001; Saunders & Thornhill, 2003, p. 362). Procedural justice is considered to be more important than distributive justice in the context of organizational change because processes have a more enduring quality than the allocation of resources. Korsgaard, Sapienza, and Schweiger (2002) contend that individuals make sense of a change decision based on their perceptions of procedural justice. An organization’s procedures are fair ‘‘to the degree that the decision-making processes demonstrate consistency, bias suppression, accuracy, correctability, representativeness, and ethicality’’ (Folger & Skarlicki, 1999, p. 37). Individuals are more concerned about procedures leading to the decision when decision outcomes are unfavourable (Korsgaard et al., 2002). Therefore, negative responses by employees are more likely to occur when they perceive the processes leading to a decision as unjust. Procedural justice also provides social value in that fair procedures provide employees with a sense of belongingness and esteem (Cropanzano & Schminke, 2001). From a social exchange perspective, when employees are treated with respect there is a greater likelihood that they will feel obliged to the organization (Korsgaard et al., 2002). In their study of survivor reactions to reorganization, Kernan and Hanges (2002) suggest that input by employees affords a sense of control and the opportunity to persuade management to make decisions that are in the employees’ interests. Procedures that allow employees to participate during the implementation process, to allow them to air their concerns, to offer new
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ideas, to express their opinions and appeal against decisions, are likely to increase their commitment to change (Morrison & Milliken, 2000; Paterson & Cary, 2002). In the context of change, it is also reasonable to expect some degree of conflict. Cobb et al. (1995a) suggest that the application of fair procedures in resolving disputes can help to encourage positive working relationships and reduce negative affect and behaviours, even if the outcome is considered a poor one for disputing parties. Informational Justice Greenberg (1993, p. 84) suggests that interactional justice comprises information by ‘‘providing knowledge about procedures that demonstrate regard for people’s concerns’’ and interpersonal justice ‘‘showing concern for individuals regarding the distributive outcome they receive’’. Thus, effective communication plays a central role in engendering trust in a change context as it can allay fears and foster favourable attitudes. Information conveyed verbally rather than in writing was found to be more effective in enhancing justice perceptions (Konovsky, 2000). In contrast, a lack of explanation may be perceived as unfair, generating resentment toward management and the decision outcome (Daly, 1995). Daly and Geyer (1994) assert that ‘‘explanations for decisions by themselves are not likely to be effective unless they address issues that employees felt they have a right to know about in a manner that they regard as sincere’’ (Daly and Geyer, 1994, p. 634). This finding has implications for planning because it is during the pre-implementation phase that employees interpret the actions of executives, their trustworthiness and longer-term prospects of fair treatment by the organization (Korsgaard et al., 2002). Kickul, Lester, and Finkl’s (2002, p. 484) research concluded that the decision outcome may influence the type of information most important to employees when they feel they have been let down by the organization. For example, if extrinsic outcomes (e.g., pay, rewards) are at stake, then the organization would need to convey information concerning formal procedures used to determine the allocation of these outcomes and ‘‘clearly explain why these formal procedures provide the fairest results’’. If intrinsic outcomes (e.g., control, autonomy) are affected, managers ‘‘should first communicate to employees that they are still valued and are considered to be an asset to the organization’’. In this instance, the focus should be on treating employees with respect and dignity with executives demonstrating empathy, concern and sensitivity for their staff.
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Interpersonal Justice Irrespective of the nomenclature adopted by the justice literature, the way individuals are treated is likely to have a significant impact on their perceptions of fairness, not only about the process of implementation, but also ‘‘about the moral obligations to treat everyone fairly that underpins this process and thus, their levels of trust’’ (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001; Saunders & Thornhill, 2003, p. 364). Treatment by management can be translated as the extent to which employees are treated with dignity, respect, politeness and honesty (Tyler & Bies, 1990). In the case of large-scale organizational change, it is feasible that employees perceive senior executives as the source of interpersonal justice or injustice through symbolic communication, observation and interaction, although these exchanges may occur less frequently than their interactions with their immediate supervisors.
A JUSTICE AND EMOTIONS PERSPECTIVE OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE The Model of organizational change from a justice and emotions perspective incorporates a number of managerial practices which influence employee justice perceptions. Findings from previous research reinforce these behaviours but are rarely considered in a systemic, holistic fashion (Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996; Brockner, DeWitt, Grover, & Reed, 1990; Cropanzano & Konovsky, 1995; Daly & Geyer, 1994; Gilliland & Schepers, 2003; Greenberg, 1994; Kernan & Hanges, 2002; Schaubroeck, May, & Brown, 1994; Shapiro & Kirkman, 1999; Tyler & De Cremer, 2005). These practices include communication, voice/participation, respectful treatment of employees and behaviour modelling. Communication The extant change literature consistently emphasizes the importance of communication as a means by which individuals adapt to the change (Armenakis et al., 1993; Dent & Galloway Goldberg, 1999; Kotter, 1995). Paterson and Cary (2002, p. 84) cite several characteristics of communication: helpfulness (Miller & Monge, 1985, cited in Paterson & Cary, 2002), openness (Miller, Johnson, & Grau, 1994, cited in Paterson & Cary, 2002), accuracy, timing and completeness (Richardson & Denton, 1996).
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A number of very useful dimensions of information as the basis for executive communication are offered by Bies (1987). He refers to these dimensions as ‘‘accounts’’. For instance, a social account is defined as ‘‘a verbal strategy employed by a person to minimize the apparent severity of the predicament or convince the audience that the wrongful act is not a fair representation of what the actor is ‘really like’ as a person’’ (Bies, 1987, p. 294). Bies refers to ‘‘leadership accounts’’ as explanations given to help create a positive image of the leader. There may also be causal accounts about the situation leading to a decision to change. As Davidson and Friedman (1998, p. 155) assert, ‘‘causal accounts tell the audience that one had no choice in the matter: the real cause of one’s actions was not one’s own preferences and intentions, but external pressures’’. This type of information usually articulates the environmental context. Ideological accounts provide vision and guiding principles, e.g., values and superordinate goals. Referential accounts suggest that circumstances could be better or worse, and would more likely be better with change. Penitential accounts acknowledge loss and the difficulties faced by employees in light of change. Together, these accounts provide employees with information as to the justification for change, as well as indications as to the credibility of the source of information. Thus, social accounts can provide an overall picture and common understanding of change, as well as perceptions of fairness. A study by Paterson and Cary (2002, p. 98) suggested that high-quality communications about change increase employees’ perceptions of the fairness of treatment they receive from managers. This finding is supported by Kernan and Hanges (2002) whose study of a reorganization found that communication quality was predictive of informational justice, not merely in the initial planning stages, but throughout the change process. The shared monitoring of the change process, or ‘‘implementation’’, was also predictive of interpersonal justice. This verifies the authors’ proposition that employees address activities that extend beyond the initial change decision, particularly with regard to the extent to which there is consistency between organizational objectives and the implementation process. Voice Research suggests that participation or ‘‘voice’’, through the expressions of concern, opinions and new ideas is related to both procedural justice and interactional justice (Kernan & Hanges, 2002). Voice influences perceptions of fairness even when it is unlikely to produce positive outcomes, or when
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the outcomes have already been decided upon (Miller, 2001). As Miller (2001, p. 531) asserts, ‘‘People believe they are entitled to have their say and to be listened to in their dealings with others, whether these dealings are formal or informal’’. The significance of voice stems from the principles of personal entitlement and the psychological contract or code of conduct. Individuals believe they are entitled to interpersonal sensitivity (Greenberg, 1994). They also expect accountability, or explanations for actions which have consequences for them (Bies & Shapiro, 1988). Injustice is perceived when individuals experience a violation of a code of conduct, an insult or are otherwise treated with disrespect. These actions deprive individuals of an entitlement or subject them to ‘‘something they do not deserve’’ (Miller, 2001, p. 533). Studies by Konovsky and Folger (1991) and Brockner, Konovsky, Cooper-Schneider, and Folger (1994) found that giving adequate notice and the manner of communicating the decision were positively related to employees’ reactions to the decision. Interpersonal Treatment Greenberg (1993) asserts that justice perceptions are enhanced when employees are treated with respect. In a study by Gilliland and Schepers (2003), the researchers concluded that group meetings were more likely to be used when large numbers of employees are to be laid off. The interpersonal justice dimension included the manager’s demeanour, minimizing victim contact and escorting victims from the premises. Stecher and Rosse (2005, p. 231) highlight the importance of interpersonal treatment by stating ‘‘perceptions of procedural justice are based, in part, on interpersonal treatment that conveys that the intentions of decision makers are benevolent and trustworthy. Moreover, polite and respectful treatment during the enactment of procedures conveys the self-worth and status of individuals’’. Conversely, derogatory evaluations, deception, inconsiderate or abusive behaviour, public criticism or coercion, are seen as violating interpersonal justice (Konovsky, 2000). In the Gilliland and Schepers (2003) study, the researchers found that managers were more likely to treat layoff victims well when they were perceived as valuable contributors to the organization. Behaviour Modelling In addition to the informational and interpersonal justice dimensions of procedural justice, change, another significant dimension, relates to the
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behaviour of leaders, more specifically, their ability to enact procedures in a fair manner (Tyler & De Cremer, 2005). Tyler and De Cremer (2005) argue first, that if leaders exercise their authority in ways that are perceived as fair, employees will be supportive of the change goals and more likely to act in cooperative and supportive ways; and, second, that employees will more strongly identify with the organization, its norms and goals. The essence of the researchers’ argument is that the leader’s ability to internally motivate employees is linked to employees’ perception of fair procedures. As Konovsky (2000, p. 490) asserts, ‘‘y employees often use the apparent fairness of the authority as an indicator of whether the authority’s orders are legitimate. If the leader appears to be acting fairly, the employee assumes that a directive is legitimate’’. From a change leadership perspective, the Tyler and De Cremer (2005) study concludes that procedures based on clearly stated rules, that are applied consistently and underpinned by genuine concern for the organization and its employees, will positively influence employee perceptions of procedural justice. Character Attributes of Senior Executives Clearly, trust is an important consideration when attempting to gain employee support for change. Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman (1995) posit that if individuals trust managers, their level of co-operation is increased and positive characteristics are attributed to them. Whitener (1997, p. 400) supports this view, stating that ‘‘employees reciprocate with attitudes and actions y aimed less at the individuals who represent the organization and more at the organization itself. Their experiences with these decisions and practices can build or destroy their trust in the organization’’. Theorists argue that change scenarios trigger the adoption of fairness heuristics or shortcuts in order to evaluate changed circumstances and changing relationships (Lind, Greenberg, Scott, & Welchans, 2000). ‘‘This is in contrast to periods of relative stability when fairness heuristics are used merely to determine how much effort is placed in a relationship and the judgments themselves are used in a ‘mindless’ manner to interpret events without reassessing the judgment in light of ongoing experiences’’ (Lind et al., 2000, p. 560). Thus, change generates a heightened sensitivity to the fairness or otherwise of outcomes, processes and treatment. More importantly, the ‘‘fairness heuristic’’ suggests that individuals use their evaluations of outcome and process to decide whether the authority is fair and ought to be obeyed.
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Trustworthiness Trust is a complex phenomenon encompassing a wide variety of constructs (Kasper-Fuehrer & Ashkanasy, 2001). Trustworthiness is based on observed and repeated behaviours of others (Caldwell & Clapham, 2003; Mayer et al., 1995). It is defined as ‘‘antecedent accumulated perceptual experiences that lead one to trust another person, institution, or organization’’ (Caldwell & Clapham, 2003, p. 351). Clearly, there are behaviours that contribute to the growth of trust and the growth of distrust and often the research is conducted at the individual level. Nevertheless, it appears that the trustor can be an individual and the trustee an organization. Ellis and Shockley-Zalabak (2001) identified four dimensions of trust most broadly supported in the literature: (a) competence in organizational leadership and the organization as a whole; (b) openness and honesty including sincerity of communication; (c) concern for organizational members from their leaders; (d) reliability defined as the expectation for consistent, dependable behaviour, including congruence between word and deed; and (e) identification – if employees identified with an organization, they would be more likely to trust it. Kasper-Fuehrer and Ashkanasy (2001) suggest that communication of trustworthiness is central to the building of trust. Employee trust grows or is undermined through the relationship between manager and employee which, in turn, is influenced by the interaction between employees and management. Management activities and behaviours provide employees with cues concerning their motives, intentions, as well as their character. Although as many as 10 characteristics of managerial behaviour have been identified as influencing trustworthiness, three character attributes appear to be most consistently mentioned in the literature (Mayer et al., 1995, p. 717; Whitener, Brodt, Korsgaard, & Werner, 1998). These attributes are integrity, benevolence and ability (Mayer et al., 1995). Integrity A key attribute to be considered is the integrity of senior management. It is unlikely that employees will trust individuals whom they perceive to be dishonest or manipulative. In a longitudinal study conducted by Bews and Rossouw (2002), integrity was found to be a predictor of trustworthiness. Integrity is defined ‘‘as the application of a set of moral and ethical principles, acceptable to both trustor and trustee, which are predictable and reliable y’’ and includes a moral obligation to others, consistency,
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dependability and credibility (Bews & Rossouw, 2002, p. 382). This view is supported by Mayer et al. (1995), who add that consistency of the manager’s past actions and congruence of word and deed affect the extent to which the manager is deemed to have integrity. If, for instance, managers are seen to act with integrity, and keep their promises, individuals may feel less threatened. Benevolence The second attribute of benevolence is defined as ‘‘the perception of a positive orientation of the trustee toward the trustor’’ (Mayer et al., 1995, p. 719). Benevolence relates to the extent to which a manager is seen to want to do good to the employee, and therefore, empathy and social consideration would be attributes of benevolent leaders. While, at first glance, benevolence may appear to be closely linked to treating others with dignity and respect, it also includes acts undertaken in the interests of employees, such as loyalty, concern, altruism and goodwill (Bews & Rossouw, 2002). As Bews and Rossouw (2002, p. 383) assert, ‘‘Benevolence incorporates a degree of support and encouragement and consequently encompasses fairness, concern and loyalty and, subsequently, benevolence is a far more adequate label as a facilitator of trustworthiness than concern, loyalty or fairness, respectively’’. This is important in terms of employee appraisals of change situations. Management’s concern about employees is likely to lead to less threatening appraisals because employees may feel that management is not acting in a self-interested manner (Mishra & Spreitzer, 1998). Ability The final attribute relevant to trust is ability or the ‘‘group of skills, competencies and characteristics that enable a party to have influence within some specific domain’’ (Mayer et al., 1995, p. 717). Here, the term ‘‘ability’’ is differentiated from ‘‘competence’’. Competence refers to technical expertise in a specific and fixed field, while ability relates to skills and aptitudes in another domain, thus reflecting a broader range of expertise, for example, interpersonal communication. Ability therefore relates to the task as well as to the context. The belief that management has the ability to successfully implement change for the betterment of the organization may lead to trust and to positive employee behaviours because employees feel confident in supporting the vision and change interventions.
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As Cobb et al. (1995b, p. 135) suggest, ‘‘leaders perceived as fair command loyalty, commitment and trust’’. In addition, Mayer et al. (1995) assert that ability, benevolence and integrity are the three key factors in determining trustworthiness. Trustworthiness is determined by some combination of these three factors, however, trustworthiness may also be temporal. Events or incidents can occur that prompt reappraisal of these character attributes, which can impact upon perceived trustworthiness (Mayer & Davis, 1999). In addition, Brockner and Siegel (1996) assert that ‘‘stability’’ or history is a factor in trusting relationships. In particular, they refer to the past being an accurate predictor of management’s behaviour in the future. For instance, they argue that while structural components of the relationship, such as organizational policy and practices may remain constant over time, interpersonal interaction in the past may influence employee expectations of their treatment into the future. Most approaches to organizational justice identify management activities that satisfy or violate principles of distributive, procedural, informational and interpersonal justice. These include the validity and adequacy of information, opportunities for voice, displays of sensitivity and concern by management, consistent and genuine behaviour modelling (Greenberg, 1993; Korsgaard et al., 2002). The provision of information concerning decision-making procedures has been found to be highly correlated with procedural justice (Greenberg, 1993). Justification of the change (Daly & Geyer, 1994) and voice appear to be particularly important in change contexts. Information in the form of justification, explanations and advance notice were often reported in studies. So too, was the opportunity for voice. Employees who were given an opportunity to express their concerns and ideas were more likely to perceive the change as fair than if the opportunity were denied (Konovsky, 2000). These studies clearly demonstrate that creating an organizational climate of fairness is critical to successfully implementing major change.
THE MEDIATING EFFECTS OF EMOTION Justice is generally referred to as a cognitive concept but its effects are both emotional and behavioural (Chebat & Slusarczyk, 2005). Generally, research reveals that individuals who perceive that they are treated fairly will experience positive emotions, while those who perceive injustice, will experience negative emotions (Chebat & Slusarcyzk, 2005; Weiss et al., 1999).
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As Weiss et al. (1999, p. 786) comment, ‘‘much justice research has assumed, explicitly or implicitly, that emotion is the central mechanism through which a sense of unfairness is translated into work behavior’’. For example, a study conducted by Mikula, Scherer, and Athenstaedt (1998) found that anger (followed by disgust, sadness, fear, guilt and shame) was the most likely emotional reaction to unjust events. Not only may employees experience positive or negative emotions, individuals may experience different emotions simultaneously. For instance, in a study conducted by Weiss et al. (1999, p. 791), participants who were the recipients of biased processes felt ‘‘happy, proud and guilty all at the same time’’. Emotional responses to justice vary across the justice dimensions (Chebat & Slusarcyzk, 2005; Barclay, Skarlicki, & Pugh, 2005). Distributive justice is regarded as the most tangible and easily assessed of the relevant justice dimensions. In a study focusing on discrete emotions and justice conducted by Weiss et al. (1999), findings indicated that happiness was a consequence of perceived distributive justice, and anger a consequence of perceived distributive injustice. The fairer the distribution of outcomes, the more likely it is that individuals will feel positively (Hegtvedt & Killian, 1999, cited in Chebat & Slusarcyzk, 2005). Generally, the perception of unfavourable outcomes has been found to be consistently related to anger and resentment (Stecher & Rosse, 2005). From a procedural justice perspective, Miller (2001) argues that individual concerns regarding procedural justice or injustice are more powerful and independent of effects on outcomes. Indeed, there is widespread support for the argument that procedural justice is more important when outcomes are unfavourable than when they are favourable (Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996). Brockner and Wiesenfeld (1996) concluded that if unfavourable outcomes result from unfair procedures, individuals were predicted to respond negatively to the injustice. Consistent with these findings, Hegtvedt and Killian (1999) (cited in Chebat & Slusarcyzk, 2005) established that in a bargaining situation, individuals who perceived the process to be fair were less likely to feel negative about the result. From an interpersonal perspective, Miller (2001) contends that insults or disrespectful treatment by others are a source of anger and aggression. In terms of interpersonal justice, the literature provides an overview of the range of actions that offend others and arouse feelings of injustice. Critical to this line of thinking is the notion of fair treatment and respect. The sources of disrespectful treatment may include unjustified blame, lack of recognition for performance, violations of promises, failure to admit an error, giving directives in an inappropriate tone and ruthless use of one’s power (Miller, 2001).
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This finding is also supported by Stecher and Rosse (2005) whose research revealed that both distributive and interactional justice produced significant main effects on negative emotions. Their findings conclude that interactional injustice produced stronger negative responses than those created by distributive injustice. Moreover, adherence to fair procedures did not attenuate the negative emotion emerging from either distributive or interactional justice. This type of injustice is capable of generating the same emotional reactions as those of a tangible or economic nature. This has significant implications for managers in relation to the quality of their interpersonal treatment of employees. Recent research assesses the combined effects of distributive and procedural justice (Barclay et al., 2005). Barclay and colleagues conducted research to determine how different justice dimensions interacted to predict two emotional outcomes, i.e., inward-focused emotions (shame and guilt) and outward-focused emotions (anger and hostility). Results revealed that when procedural or interactional justice was low, employees attributed their poor outcomes to external sources, such as their manager, and thus, experienced low levels of guilt and shame. On the other hand, if procedural or interactional justice was high, and outcomes were poor, they were more likely to experience inward-focused or self-focused negative emotions. Irrespective of outcome favourability or unfavourability, the researchers found that when procedural or interactional justice was low, the emotional response was negative and outward-focused (e.g., anger and hostility). This suggests that poor treatment and procedures by managers can lead to negative emotions irrespective of the distributive outcome. Therefore, individuals can experience negative emotions even if outcomes are positive. Using a layoff as an example, Barclay et al. (2005, p. 638) argue that ‘‘even if an organization takes care to ensure that employees who are laid off receive favourable economic outcomes (i.e., severance packages), improper implementation (i.e., unfair procedures or interpersonal treatment) can offset their positive benefits’’. More importantly, their research found that when either procedural or interactional justice was low, anger and resentment were high irrespective of outcome favourability. In the researchers’ view, when outcomes are unfavourable, employees seek information to determine the other party’s responsibility (organization or manager) for the outcome. This suggests that the poorer the treatment, the more likely employees were to blame external sources, such as the manager, leading to anger and resentment. These results differ from previous findings which suggested that outcome favourability mitigated the effects of procedural injustice.
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Recipients of change are influenced by their past experiences (Davidson & Friedman, 1998). Often the attitudes held by less powerful groups are governed by their past experiences of injustice and consequently their outlook on social accounts regarding change may differ. While knowledge of individual experiences may be difficult to assess, a group’s past experiences of change from a justice perspective may give managers an indication as to the group’s receptivity to social accounts. Moreover, while social accounts may succeed in reducing feelings of anger toward a perpetrator, they might be less effective in diminishing feelings of injustice when there is strong empathy for the victim by observers, or when the victim is from the same social group (Davidson & Friedman, 1998). Therefore, social accounts may be impotent with regard to less powerful groups or in-group victims compared with other situations. As negative events subside, there may be a misconception by a manager that disapproval and injustice have diminished. Instead, what may occur is that negative feelings persist within individuals only to resurface at some other time and in some other context. Therefore, past experiences and group categories may affect justice perceptions of change decisions, processes and behaviours in organizations. The negative effects of injustice may manifest even when injustice has not occurred. Shapiro and Kirkman (1999) examined the negative effect of employees who anticipated distributive injustice resulting from structural changes involving the establishment of self-managed work teams. Understandably, as with most restructures, employees were anxious about job loss. However, other distributive justice outcomes of concern included undesirable job assignments or increased confrontation with co-workers. As a consequence of perceived anticipatory distributive injustice, employees were therefore more likely to adopt negative attitudes and engage in negative behaviours, such as turnover intentions and reduced organizational commitment (Shapiro & Kirkman, 1999). These perceptions were more likely to occur in situations of unfavourable labour conditions such as layoffs, terminations, recession and poor job availability. They also found that only resistance and organizational commitment were curbed by perceptions of procedural justice. Skarlicki and Folger (1997) (cited in Fox, Spector, & Miles, 2001) reviewed recent justice research to conclude that employee responses to perceptions of injustice involve negative emotions such as anger, resentment and a desire for retaliation, as well as a range of negative behaviours such as theft (Greenberg, 1993), vandalism, sabotage, reduction of OCBs, withdrawal and resistance (Jermier, Knights, & Nord, 1994, cited in Fox et al., 2001). A study by Fox et al. (2001) supported these findings to suggest that
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contexts which are perceived as unfair by employees may lead to negative emotions and subsequently to counterproductive work behaviours. This implies that organizations need to actively manage the emotional effects of injustice. Taking into account recent findings in the justice literature, the importance of employee emotional responses to injustice cannot be underestimated. These responses may ultimately translate into attitudes and behaviours unwelcomed by the organization. It is argued that in the context of major organizational change, emotions mediate the relationship between justice and employee trust in the organization. This proposition accords with the conclusion of a review conducted by Brockner and Siegel (1996), which suggested that it is not the main effects of justice that influence employee responses to decisions, but the trust generated by it. All three major dimensions of organizational justice are deemed to be differentially related to trust in the supervisor and the organization (Aryee et al., 2002). For instance, empirical research asserts that procedural justice is linked to organizational trust through employee perceptions of fair treatment and processes (Konovsky & Pugh, 1994; Mayer & Davis, 1999). Trust is therefore considered an outcome of distributive (Alexander, Sinclair, & Tetrick, 1995, cited in Lewicki, Wiethoff, & Tomlinson, 2005; Hubbell & Chory-Assad, 2005), procedural (Konovsky & Cropanzano, 1991; Korsgaard, Schweiger, & Sapienza, 1995; Korsgaard, Brodt, & Whitener, 2002; Mayer et al., 1995; Hubbell & Chory-Assad, 2005; Albrecht & Travaglione, 2003) and interactional justice (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001; Aryee et al., 2002; Becerra & Gupta, 2003) which leads to employee support or otherwise for decisions, decision-makers and the organization as a whole (Lewicki et al., 2005). Lewicki et al. (2005) consider the relationship between justice and trust to be a complex one, with researchers in both the trust and justice disciplines unable to clearly define the link. This may be partly explained by the failure to take emotional responses to perceptions of justice into account. For instance, fairness heuristic theory proposes that individuals adopt a fairness judgement shortcut when they are faced with the question of whether they can trust others not to exploit or exclude them from social relationships and groups (Greenberg & Weithoff, 2001; Van den Bos, Wilke, & Lind, 1998). This is important as individuals need to feel secure in ‘‘unfamiliar or unstable situations’’ (Greenberg & Wiethoff, 2001, p. 276). Fairness heuristic theory asserts that given the nature of the relationship between employees and authority figures, such as senior executives, individuals feel uneasy about the types of outcomes they may receive and
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consequently need to know whether they can trust senior management. Van den Bos et al. (1998) argue that because much of the information pertaining to the authority figure’s trustworthiness may not be available to employees, they may look to procedural fairness as a heuristic substitute. Therefore, it is posited that without prior information, individuals react more positively toward an outcome when an executive has adopted fair procedures. An alternative perspective postulated by Hubbell and Chory-Assad (2005) adopts equity theory as the basis for employees evaluating events. Here, individuals consider the contributions they make versus the outcomes they receive. The authors argue that during the appraisal of events, the individual can restore perceived inequity by reducing their levels of trust, and by doing so, reduce the resources he or she contributes to the relationship. Decreasing trust may also indicate dissatisfaction with the relationship and subsequent emotional responses, such as anger or frustration. Affective responses such as relational trust, on the other hand, reflect an individual’s intuitions, instincts or feelings concerning whether or not a party is trustworthy. This entails the ‘‘emotional bonds’’ (care and concern) of trust (Aryee et al., 2002; Morrow, Hansen, & Pearson, 2004, p. 53). In this instance, an individual suspends belief that the other party may not be trustworthy due to the absence of evidence to the contrary. Instead, the individual relies on instincts, intuition and emotions during interactions and exposure to the other party to determine the other party’s trustworthiness (Morrow et al., 2004, p. 53). Over time these feelings influence the cognitive processes leading to the development or otherwise of trust between parties. Therefore, the affective component of trust relies on a history of events and relational interactions. As mentioned previously, social exchange involves making a commitment by one party to another based on goodwill and support, including the investment of time, energy and effort. It also implies that the other party will reciprocate. Fair treatment of employees through HR policies and practices, or respectful attitudes toward employees, act as inducements and facilitate an exchange through which trust is developed and supported over time (Aryee et al., 2002). In order to redress an imbalance in terms of positive inputs by one party, employees reciprocate through their positive attitudes and behaviours, such as organizational commitment, OCBs and intentions to remain (Aryee et al., 2002). Major change can be very unsettling for employees, evoking a multiplicity of emotional and behavioural responses, much of which can be explained through the organizational justice literature. Broadly speaking, empirical studies and theoretical articles suggest that change implementation which is
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handled fairly and with integrity may lessen the likelihood of negative attitudes and behaviours (Baron & Neuman, 1998). However, despite this work, research does not adequately explain the precise mechanisms through which fairness perceptions affect subsequent attitudes and behaviours.
CONCLUSION This chapter reviewed the literature on organizational change, emotions, justice and trust to show that employees’ behavioural reactions to change initiatives are due, in large part, to the responses of employees to the character attributes and organizational practices of senior executives. From this review, we developed a model of organizational change from a justice and emotions perspective, which depicts employees’ justice perceptions related to senior executives as affecting trust directly and indirectly, through associated emotional responses. The change literature consistently asserts that in order to successfully implement change, it is imperative that leaders gain the commitment and support of employees. These outcomes arguably involve emotional mechanisms. Thus, for a change-ready climate to exist, senior managers need to demonstrate their willingness to support it. Their commitment is demonstrated through a set of interconnected management practices which encourage positive emotional responses to change. For an organization to be ‘‘change-ready’’, its culture and climate need to be positive and supportive. Much of the responsibility for this lies with the role of senior management and its influence on the emotional health and welfare of employees. Creating and sustaining positive emotions may help organizations to deal with the complexities and difficulties associated with change. Previous research suggests that employee perceptions of justice increase the likelihood of successful change implementation, as well as the mediating effects of emotions and trust on these responses (Cobb et al., 1995a). On the other hand, when employees perceive the actions of organizations as unfair, they may respond with negative feelings and attitudes, and engage in resistant behaviours (e.g., withdrawing effort) as retribution for the perceived injustice (Folger & Skarlicki, 1999). The successful implementation of major change depends on recipients’ and implementers’ perceptions of justice. This, in turn, requires greater vigilance and sensitivity to justice issues on the part of senior executives as change strategists, particularly with regard to their credibility as leaders and the creation of a climate of fairness (Novelli, Kirkman, & Shapiro, 1995).
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How individuals are treated in the past may influence their acceptance of change in the future.
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CHAPTER 11 EMOTIONAL CAPITAL IN CARING WORK Tuija Virkki ABSTRACT The present article sets out to explore the ethical aspect of emotional competence used as both a personal and a collective resource in the occupational context of caring work. The data discussed in this article consists of interviews of and writings by Finnish social workers and nurses. By combining the concepts ‘emotional capital’ and ‘ethics of care’, this article concludes that the emotional competence of care workers manifests itself as the capability to use one’s emotions in a way that enhances the ethical values of caring work and provides the employees with a sense of professional competence.
INTRODUCTION During the past 20 years, interest in the role of emotion in organizations has increased, following Arlie Russell Hochschild’s seminal work on emotional labor. According to Hochschild (1983, pp. 7–19), the expanding service sector in the American economy has created a means of alienation which is potentially harmful to workers, namely emotional labor. Emotional labor refers to the work involved in managing one’s emotions to create emotional Functionality, Intentionality and Morality Research on Emotion in Organizations, Volume 3, 265–285 Copyright r 2007 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1746-9791/doi:10.1016/S1746-9791(07)03011-8
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displays. The rules for emotional labor are set by management, and the central aspect of a job is to manage one’s own emotions for the good of the organization. Hence, employee emotions become commoditized when emotions are sold for a wage and the private capacities for empathy and warmth are put to corporate uses. What once was a private act of emotion management is now sold as labor in public-contact jobs; what once was a privately negotiated rule of feeling or display is now dictated by the company’s standards. Since Hochschild, most research on emotions in organizations has focused on the harmful effects of emotional labor and has, consequently, overlooked the non-monetary symbolic goods that employees themselves gain by managing their emotions in accordance with the organizational objectives and with the professional ethics in question. The aspect of the moral dimension of emotion management needs to be explored more closely, since morality is an essential part of the processes in which social practices and patterns of human action are formed at work. All professions are grounded by values and guided by ethical codes of how to behave, act, feel, and think. These professional ethics are internalized as dispositions for pursuing certain things in one’s work and for acquiring a rewarding sense of professional – and simultaneously moral – competence. In the present article, the ethical aspect of emotional competence is combined with analysis of the social formation of these competencies. There is a need for theories on emotions in organizations that acknowledge the symbolic benefits of emotional competencies for employees themselves, and which simultaneously recognize the socially conditioned nature of those benefits. The socially conditioned nature of emotional competence is related to the ways in which societal conventions and ethical norms produce and reproduce these competencies. In addition, the socially conditioned nature of emotional competence is associated with different forms of dominance and social exclusion. While the popular concept ‘emotional intelligence’ highlights the emotional competencies, and the importance of those skills both to personal and corporate success (Goleman, 1996, p. 42), it does not take into consideration the notion that social inequalities may determine personal success in organizational life (Hughes, 2005, p. 609). Similarly, the discussion on human capital in the human resource management literature and the concept ‘emotional capital’ used as a synonym for ‘brand’ and ‘corporate capital’ in the management literature (see Thomson, 1998) can be criticized as neglecting the aspect of power relations. The aim of the present article is to situate employee emotional competencies in wider structural and cultural contexts by using the concept
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‘emotional capital’, which in this context refers to an extension of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s theory on capital. The concept ‘emotional capital’ regards emotions as resources, or a set of assets, which can be circulated, accumulated, and exchanged for other forms of capital within a particular context that allows these resources to count. Emotions are constructed as capital by managing them according to their suitability for the values of the organizational context in question. The values of the context organize emotion and, thus, what constitutes emotional capital varies in different contexts. Much of the research on emotions in organizations has been about service-sector professions and about profit-producing corporations or companies. In the present article, I will explore the ethical aspects of emotional capital in the occupational context of caring work by analyzing interviews of and writings by Finnish social workers and nurses, almost all of them women. I will focus on the emotions aroused in encounters with clients, and more particularly, on emotional management in dealing with annoyed or even aggressive clients. Within the context of caring work, emotional capital refers to the capability of using one’s emotions in a way that promotes the ethical values of caring work. The concept ‘emotional capital’ is combined with the concept ‘ethics of care’ to illuminate the ethical dimension of emotional capital in caring work. At the beginning of this article, I will outline the background of ‘emotional capital’ and ‘ethics of care’. Then, I will present an exploratory study that examines the role of emotional capital in caring work. My aim is to answer the following questions: (1) What kinds of emotional capital do caring professionals use in encountering angry clients? (2) How is emotional capital related to professional ethics within the caring context? (3) What new perspectives into emotional competencies in caring work does the aspect of the socially conditioned nature of emotional capital offer?
THE CONCEPT ‘EMOTIONAL CAPITAL’ To understand the concept ‘emotional capital’, one has to examine the basic elements of Bourdieu’s theoretical framework. A distinctive feature of Bourdieu’s theoretical apparatus is the notion that various types of capital account for individuals’ insertion in a social system. For Bourdieu (1986), capital is not necessarily economic capital, but any sort of resource, including social and professional contacts, personal or institutional status, and anything else that has value and translates into the ability to make
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things happen. Social action depends on social determinants deriving from the individuals’ position within the cultural field, the amount of social, economic, and cultural capital that an agent possesses and the personal trajectory experienced. Broadly speaking, social capital refers to being in a network, while economic capital refers to the ownership of stocks, shares, and monetary rewards, and cultural capital refers to intellectual or educational qualifications and to distinctions within the fields of art and science. Bourdieu’s other central concepts include ‘field’ and ‘habitus’. A field can be defined as a series of institutions, rules, rituals, norms, and conventions which produce and authorize certain discourses and activities. Furthermore, a field is constituted by the conflict between groups or individuals, such as when they attempt to determine what constitutes capital within a particular field and how that capital is to be distributed. For a particular form of cultural behavior to become capital, it must be convertible into economic, social, and cultural benefits; it must be convertible into something that agents can play with in a field. Each field calls forth and gives life to a specific form of interest, a tacit recognition of the values of the game and of the practical mastery of its rules. The habitus is an internal organizing mechanism, and as a result of social positioning and dispositions acquired from the field it learns to play the game. Understanding the game involves knowledge of the various rules (written and unwritten), values, and imperatives which inform and determine the agents’ practices, and which are continuously being transformed by the agents and their practices. This knowledge allows agents to make sense of what is happening around them and to make strategic decisions as to how a field should be negotiated – in other words, which practices or discourses are appropriate in certain circumstances (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, pp. 7–26; Webb, Schirato, & Danaher, 2002, pp. 50–68). While Bourdieu never explicitly refers to emotional capital in his own work, he does describe practical and symbolic work that generate devotion, generosity, and solidarity, arguing that this work falls more particularly on women, who are responsible for maintaining relationships. According to Bourdieu, women fulfill a cathartic, quasi-therapeutic function in regulating men’s emotional lives, calming their anger, helping them accept the injustices and difficulties of life (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 77). In Bourdieu’s framework, women are seen as ‘capital-bearing objects’ that have value to the primary groups which they belong to, rather than ‘capital-accumulating subjects’ with strategies of their own. This flaw in Bourdieu’s framework is connected to a disregard for the capital investment strategies of women and
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to a neglect of the emotional dimension in accounts of the habitus (Reay, 2005, pp. 57–58). Helga Nowotny (1981), Elizabeth B. Silva (2000), and Dianne Reay (2005), among others, have extended Bourdieu’s concept of capitals to the realm of emotions. Their conceptualization makes women active agents accumulating emotional capital that has use and exchange value for women and for others who possess this kind of capital. According to Silva (2000, pp. 3–4), the feminist notion of emotional capital refers to the capacity of connecting, which involves acts, intentions and sentiments. There are various circumstances in which emotions are assets that can be cashed in specific markets and linked to specific strategies of advancement. For her part, Nowotny (1981, p. 148) sees emotional capital as a variant of social capital, but a characteristic of the private, rather than the public sphere. For Nowotny, emotional capital is generally confined within the bounds of affective relationships of family and friends and it encompasses the emotional resources you hand on to those you care about. Nowotny recognizes a key difference between emotional and other capitals: unlike the other forms of capital, emotional capital is a resource women have in greater abundance than men. She claims that emotional capital is developed in response to barriers rather than possibilities, and that women have been able to accumulate only certain kinds of capitals and they have been equally limited in converting the emotional capital gained in the private sector into other capitals such as cultural and economic capital. The main consequence of emotional capital’s lack of value in the public sector is that it is used for furthering family investments in children and husbands. However, Eva Illouz (1997, pp. 34–52) sees emotional capital as a skill associated with the new middle classes and their involvement in the psychological discourse and, thus, as both gendered and classed. As American society became oriented towards a service economy, a psychological discourse that dealt primarily with persons, interactions and emotions was the natural candidate for shaping the language of selfhood in the workplace. Along with the demand to become oriented towards persons rather than commodities, emotions, and management of the self became increasingly central features of the workplace. The language of therapy, at once making sense of objective transformations of the workplace and shaping the new language of selfhood, became the privileged culture repertoire, within which members of the new service class constructed and understood themselves. Illouz argues that the management of emotions was made an important component of the habitus of the new service class, habitus which navigates comfortably between the domestic spheres and the sphere of work. Since
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psychologists worked with a terminology derived from studies of the family, the explanations for human relations in the workplace came typically from that realm. New forms of symbolic capital were naturalized and, as a result, one’s emotional and verbal style, personality, and ability to master social bonds were made into invisible assets to be traded in social relations. As an answer to the emotional and the symbolic competence demanded by the contemporary corporation, the idea of emotional control was integrated in the newly emerging and powerful discourse of ‘professionalism’ and, consequently, self-control became a crucial asset in the contemporary corporation for signaling one’s candidacy to professionalism or leadership. In spite of Illouz’s insights, ‘emotional capital’ is poorly used in organizational studies. Instead, in both the sociological and organizational literature there is a rich and emerging body of work on the subject of emotional labor. There are several similarities between the concepts ‘emotional capital’ and ‘emotional labor’: both Illouz and Hochschild take into account the connection between emotional management and the ‘new’ service class. Moreover, in accordance with feminist theories of emotional capital, Hochschild (1983, p. 163) stresses the gendered nature of emotional labor. Since women in general have far less independent access to money, power, authority, or status in society, they make a resource out of feeling, and offer it to men as a gift in return for the material resources they lack. As traditionally more accomplished managers of feelings in private life, women have to put emotional labor on the market more than men, and women know more about its personal costs. Although some feminists (e.g., Lovell, 2000) have argued that the contemporary labor market provides many examples of women as subjects with capital-accumulating strategies of their own, others (Nowotny, 1981) have noted that the resources are deployed as capital within a very restricted and subordinate field. Women may exchange them to economic capital, but only for very low wages; or for more cultural capital, but only at institutions of relatively low status. In addition to the similarities between ‘emotional capital’ and ‘emotional labor’, there are also differences. While a person can use, buy and hire other person’s emotional labor, emotional capital cannot be exchanged in similar ways, asserts Silva (2000, p. 4). As with social and cultural capital, emotional capital is an asset that derives from personal abilities, connections, and investments in and from the self. Like other kinds of Bourdieu’s capitals, emotional capital has use value and exchange value in particular markets. Moreover, Hochschild focuses on the harmful effects of emotional labor and especially on the costs to the worker, even if there seems to be a paradoxical combination of costs and benefits of emotional management.
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Whereas Hochschild sees emotional control as a variant of social control, Illouz (1997, p. 39) adds that in certain occupations it is also an attribute of symbolic capital such as ‘competence’ and ‘professionalism’.
THE ETHICS OF CARE The perception of symbolic capital as competence and professionalism is one of the reasons I prefer ‘emotional capital’ to ‘emotional labor’. In addition, Hochschild’s theory of commodified feelings is inadequate for describing the complexity of emotional control in the context of caring work, since it reduces the relationship between the employee and the customer to an exchange-based transaction, and considers motivation for work simply monetary. This is partly due to the fact that Hochschild studied the emotional labor of flight attendants whose relationships to their customers are often temporary in nature and motivated by the interests of the service sector. In comparison, the informants in my research are social workers and nurses whose professional occupations involve considerable work in caring for and about others. Welfare organizations focus not on the profit of the organization, but on the well-being of the cared for. Because of the relationship that tends to develop between employees and the cared for, caring occupations should be seen as part of a whole class of occupations that are not fully commodified, and in which workers have motivations and moral responsibilities that are not purely monetary. (Himmelweit, 1999, p. 27). Although all professions are grounded by values and guided by ethical codes, caring occupations are arguably inherently ethical and moral, by virtue of the moral disposition to care for the needy-people who temporarily or over a long period of time are unable to care for themselves (Bisman, 2004; Cronqvist, Theorell, Burns, & Lutzen, 2004). According to Francesca Cancian (2000), professionalism in care occupations is characterized by the ‘ethics of care’, in which care is a combination of feelings of affection and responsibility for actions that provide for individual needs or well-being. As Sandi Mann (2004, pp. 207–208) suggests, many employees within caring professions manage emotions in accordance with the moral disposition to care, and see this managing as an important part of their professionalism, and not as an act of obeying the explicit demands of their employers. Although many employees in caring professions want to display emotions that concur with societal expectations, these emotional expectations tend not to be prescribed by the organization. Employees may feel that emotional skills are desirable, and they derive satisfaction from their ability to make a
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difference by contributing to their clients’ well-being. Rather than exploitative, the emotional aspect of their work seems to be a source of satisfaction. One of the most famous proponents of the ethics of care, Selma Sevenhuijsen (1998, pp. 55–58) states that the ethics of care opposes the traditional assumption of moral subjectivity such as the dependence on the duty to follow some universal moral imperative. If caring is by definition practice based on duty, it becomes difficult to imagine that people can derive a meaningful moral identity from caring or that caring can be a source of self-realization and a satisfying activity. The equating of care with self-sacrifice also has to do with the opposition between dependency and autonomy with which the modern practice of ethics and Western moral culture are permeated: in dominant discourses on ethics and morality the moral subject is regarded as an independent, detached, and autonomous individual. If the definition of personhood is exclusively marked by the ideal image of autonomy and independence, it is difficult to imagine that ‘giving’ can form part of a person’s moral ideals, or that ‘giving’ without getting equally in return is worth pursuing on moral grounds. In contrast to an atomistic view of human nature, the ethics of care posits a ‘relational self’: a moral agent who is embedded in concrete relationships with other people and who acquires an individual moral subjectivity through interactive patterns of behavior, perceptions, and interpretations. Subjectivity, and with it the ability to engage in moral activity, is formed in specific cultural and historical situations. Sevenhuijsen (1998, pp. 19–23) views care as a social practice, in which different sorts of moral considerations and moral vocabularies can be expressed. ‘Practice’ refers to human action which is socially based and organized by formal and informal rules, by interpretive conventions, and by implicit or explicit normative frameworks. Care can be seen as a mode of acting in which participants perceive and interpret care needs and act upon these needs. How their interpretation and acting proceeds varies according to the situation and social and institutional contexts, and depends on a variety of factors, such as norms and rules about good caring and the relational dynamics between the actors concerned. This kind of theory of the ethics of care has many similarities with the feminist theories of emotional capital. In social practices people act on the basis of resources such as money, influence, expertise, competence, and knowledge, and the ability to provide care can be seen as a resource, too. For Silva (2000, p. 4), emotional capital refers not only to a capacity to connect, but also to moral thinking about personal connections. In this way, emotional capital deals with individual capabilities to achieve the ideals of
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relating to other people. The feminist interpretations of emotional capital derive from, in addition to Bourdieu, the feminist ethics of care in which the relevance of care, ethics, interdependence, and the emotional aspects of relationships are taken into account. Like Bourdieu’s theory on capital, the theory of the ethics of care recognizes the fact that access to different kinds of resources is determined by social relations and power processes. Social divisions in care are strongly marked by gender and class, and the power processes which inform these. In the present article, Bourdieu’s conceptualization of the socially conditioned nature of capital is combined with a broader view of the ethical dimensions of caring work, and the role of emotions in the professional practice of caring. The concept ‘emotional capital’ allows me to explore how the professional ideals of the caring professions organize the management of emotions, and how this management can be used simultaneously as a personal as well as a collective resource.
DATA AND METHODS The results presented in this chapter are based on qualitative data concerning the experiences of conflict situations at work of Finnish social workers and nurses. In 2004–2005, I interviewed 20 social workers and 15 nurses, with whom I discussed violence originating from both their clients and the professional community. The interviews were based on a thematic core and they lasted from one to two hours. Although the interviews were originally intended to elicit information on the forms of violence encountered at work, the interviewees themselves raised the issue of the role of emotions and emotional skills in preventing violence up. In addition to interviews, I also obtained 20 written accounts which I received in response to requests I published in periodicals of corresponding professional organizations. The nurses and social workers who responded to these requests worked for the public sector throughout Finland. The interviewed social workers are employed by city or municipal social welfare agencies in central Finland, and work in various branches of the social sector. Three of them are employed in supervisory positions. Their ages range from 25 to 60 years, and all but three are women. The interviewed nurses work either in various departments of the central hospitals or at municipal health center wards in central Finland. Two of the interviewees are head nurses. The interviewed nurses, all of them women, were aged 24–61 during the time of the interviews.
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All interviews were fully transcribed, which made it possible to analyze the interviews and the written accounts together. I analyzed the data by means of content analysis: after careful reading and rereading, I identified themes that were repeated in the data, and grouped these themes as clusters. For example, the themes of ‘professionalism’, ‘ideals of caring’, ‘management of one’s emotions’, and ‘neediness of clients’ formed one cluster which I called ‘defusing conflict situations’. After I had identified the cluster, I began analyzing the interconnections of the separate themes through the concepts ‘emotional capital’ and ‘ethics of care’.
EMOTIONAL SKILLS AS ASSETS IN CARING WORK My data shows that the ability to both manage one’s own emotions and to have a positive effect on the client’s emotional state is at the core of the valued skills of the caring professionals. They associate these emotional skills with being good at their job. Facing the client and creating a positive interrelationship are, indeed, constantly emphasized in the professional ideals of caring occupations. These ideals are performed as appropriate emotions and actions at work: the capacity for showing appropriate emotions in personal interaction with clients or patients is the basis of the development of expertise both in social work and nursing. Compared to social work, health care lays a greater emphasis on care giving and physical proximity with the patient, yet both typically use successful trust relations with a client in defining the quality of work and the competence of employees (cf. also Smith, 2001, p. 298; Wilson, Morse, & Penrod, 1998, p. 446). The social workers and nurses represented in my data regarded their work as demanding professional work, which requires social and emotional skills as well as theoretical knowledge and technical competence. They stated that conflicts with clients can be prevented by producing a positive emotional state in another person while at the same time managing one’s own emotions. They stressed the value of talking calmly and maintaining an empathetic attitude, as well as the ability to interpret the emotional states of the clients, and to chose appropriate ways of responding to them. The ethics of care implies being open to others; it thus attributes an important place to communication, interpretation, and dialog (Sevenhuijsen, 1998, p. 61). Above all, my informants appeared to be proud of their ability to interpret the emotional state of their clients and to influence their emotional states. Interpreting the emotional state of the client as if it were a coded message was considered intellectually challenging: is the client getting
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annoyed, what is he or she expressing by his or her feelings, how could one calm this particular person down? Empathy – the ability to identify with the others’ points of views – is at once an emotional and a mental skill, for its prerequisite is that one deciphers the complex cues of the others’ behavior. One can successfully empathize only if one masters the complex web of emotional cues and signals through which others hide and reveal their real feelings and aspirations (Illouz, 1997, p. 42). One social worker made this generalization of irate clients: They make every effort to cover up that they are desperate and that’s why they call me a bitch; even if they really mean ‘help me, I feel so bad’.
The employees concluded that even clients themselves are not always aware of their real needs, and that it is the responsibility of the employee to interpret what kind help the clients need. According to one nurse: The relationship with a patient is rather like the relationship with a child. One thinks that a child doesn’t really understand what he or she is doing and what he or she wants.
In this way, the relationship between the employee and the aggressive client is constructed as a relationship between a competent adult and an incompetent child. On the one hand, by reducing the aggressive client metaphorically to an unreasonable child the employees may increase their tolerance towards aggressive behavior. If the client’s needs are like those of a child, they are supposed to be treated with understanding. On the other hand, seeing the capacities of the client as deficient may underline the employees’ emotional competencies and skills. With regard to emotional capital it is crucial that clients are supposed to be unable to express their needs and emotions in ‘communicative’ and ‘constructive’ way. For Bourdieu, the formation of one’s capital is based on social exclusion: one’s possession of capital requires that some others lack it. As stated earlier, the field is constituted by struggles over what constitutes capital within that particular field and who is entitled to the ownership of that capital. Due to the characteristics attached to them, some social groups are symbolically excluded from the ownership of capital. By viewing the clients as emotionally ‘illiterate’, the employees underline – often quite unintentionally – their own emotional competence as an important resource. The ethics of care emphasize caring as a moral disposition: moral agents should altruistically attend to others with compassion and recognize the equal moral worth of all persons. Despite these equalitarian ideals, an asymmetrical relationship between clients and employees is constructed between those needing care and those delivering care. As a by-product of
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caring, the recipients of care are positioned as ‘other than’ their caregivers and, thus, the very ideals of care as benevolence and altruism reinstate a hierarchical relationship between ‘givers’ and ‘receivers’. Roe Sybylla (2001, p. 72), among others, has identified the ways in which caring may create weakness and dependence, patronizing or diminishing the recipient. In my data the most interesting aspect of emotional capital is the way in which the social position of the employee as an emotionally competent professional is affirmed in the accounts of one’s care giving. The ethics of care seem to be combined with securing one’s symbolic position as a professionally competent person. This goes well with the argument of Illouz (1997, pp. 39–44) that the emotional capital at work is different from the traditional female art of sympathy. The former derives from expert knowledge, the latter from values of the private sphere such as ‘nurturing’ and ‘selfsacrifice’. Although the therapeutic discourse at work teaches sympathetic identification with others, it never cancels out one’s self-interest or even mild forms of manipulation of others. As a result, there is a peculiar mixture of strategic self-interest and caring sympathy. The therapeutic habitus is the same symbolic currency that is claimed and traded in the definition of what it means to be professional and morally (that is professionally) competent. Following Bourdieu’s ideas of the habitus, I argue that this is the very tension at the heart of the professional habitus in caring fields: how to care for and care about the clients and at the same time secure one’s sense of worth and one’s status as a competent professional. The habitus offers a model for both disciplined bodies in which habitus is the product of strategies objectively unknown to the individual, and the future-projected, strategizing, capital accruing self. For Bourdieu, the habitus is not just subject to external structures which organize it from within; it is also a model of accumulation, based on the knowledge of the game and how to play it. A feel for the rules of the game is the means of furthering and improving one’s own standing and capital within the field. (Webb et al., 2002, p. 41). There are several examples of the paradoxical ways of relating to the client in both protective, and sometimes even patronizing way, and strategically securing one’s status as an expert and as an emotionally and morally competent person. One example is the management of fear. As one informant in my data stated, an employee should suppress her feelings of fear towards the angry client: The client is afraid of the situation, but the employee should not be afraid, otherwise the situation does not seem safe to the client. If I feel endangered by the client, he or she will be all the more afraid of the situation. I think the employee should be able to create a sense of security for the client.
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In addition, the management of one’s fear is motivated by the aspect of struggle over symbolic power between the client and the employee. A nurse describes: I avoid showing my fear. There are many situations in which patients get the upper hand if they notice that a nurse is afraid of them. In the same way as one should not show one’s fear to an angry dog, because it would mean loosing the game.
A similar ambivalence goes with feelings of anger. On the one hand, the employees should not threaten the client’s sense of security by expressing their anger. On the other hand, by expressing anger, the employees ‘would degrade themselves to the level of the stupidities of the client’, as a social worker says. She explains: If you get irritated you have lost the game. I don’t want to show my anger to a client because it would mean that I would play his or her games. Rather, I try to cut short the game and not to get involved in it.
A disposition to manage emotions is an asset that, like other forms of capital, relates to social positioning (Silva, 2000, p. 23). The ability to distance oneself from one’s immediate emotional experience is the prerogative of those educated, middle-class professionals who already have a range of emotional options available, who are not overwhelmed by emotional necessity and intensity, and who can therefore approach their own self and emotions with the detached mode that comes from accumulated emotional competence (Illouz, 1997, p. 56). By using their emotional competencies, nurses and social workers feel like using some kind of control over the interaction between themselves and the clients. Based on these skills it becomes possible for the employees to negotiate conditions and contexts of the encounter moment by moment. For example, a nurse tells us about an encounter with a violent patient who was wounded in a fight and was handcuffed by two police officers. The nurse sympathized with the patient in spite of his aggressive behavior, and after discussing the situation with him she demanded the police officers release the patient from the handcuffs. The nurse bargained with the patient: she promised to be nice and gentle, if he would not be violent anymore. According to the nurse, this kind of bargaining demands patience and flexibility from the employee, but the effort is rewarded with a sense of succeeding on one’s own with a person that has been labeled as dangerous. Using her interpersonal skills as a lubricant to exchange, the nurse got her job done without being attacked by the patient. Hence, the professional habitus of the nurse was a disposition for skillfully manipulating the social bond itself, and the emotional capital she used was a resource bargaining power through the subtle art of acting with another in a way which defended both her self-interest and the interest of the patient’s well-being.
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THE LIMITS OF EMOTIONAL CAPITAL In spite of ‘manipulations’ and ‘strategies’, the morally competent professional is not a self-determined agent. Emotional capital exists in the form of long-lasting dispositions of both mind and body – in other words, in the form of habitus, and it is as much unconscious as conscious. The most crucial aspect of habitus is that it naturalizes itself and the cultural rules, agendas, and values that make it possible. People embody and act out the dispositions of the field in which they are operating. Actually, people may think and act in strategic ways, and try to use the rules of the game to their advantage, but at the same time they are influenced by the values and expectations that they get from the habitus. The professional habitus disposes social workers and nurses to certain activities and perspectives that express the culturally and historically constituted ethics of care in social work and nursing. Neither is the morally competent professional a self-sufficient agent. In the traditional ideal of the atomistic individual, the moral subject is primarily expected to pursue autonomy and independence. In this way vulnerability and dependency easily becomes separated from the ideal, morally competent professional, and localized in, or projected onto others: weak or needy clients. Because the feminist ethic of care, with its relational image of subjectivity, rejects a radical separation between the self and the other, and replaces this separation with an interactive image of moral subjectivity, it is able to situate vulnerability, ambiguity, and dependency within the moral subjects themselves (Sevenhuijsen, 1998, p. 57). In the present study, the aspects of mutual interdependence and recognition are vital for a deeper understanding of the socially conditioned nature of emotional capital. While many nurses and social workers are proud of their emotional skills, some of them suspect that clients do not always value these skills. For example, the emotional capital may be a dead letter in the masculine working class sphere, where physical superiority is more valued than emotional skills and caring. Furthermore, due to the low profile and low status historically attributed to caring work, and the invisible emotional effort essential to it, it is questioned if these skills are valued in general. As a social worker states: We do all we can to be helpful and empathetic and still they don’t appreciate it and we have to hear insults and get attacked, it makes me so angry cause we don’t deserve it. But it only reflects the public opinion that does not recognize that we are highly competent professionals, who have to do a demanding job that requires a whole person to get involved in it.
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In order to be capital, the emotional skills have to be recognized by others as valuable resources (see also Bourdieu, 1986, p. 248). This leads us to consider the societal conditions for the recognition of emotional skills as a valuable set of assets that counts in the fields of social care and nursing. The values attributed to individual characteristics, skills, and activities are subject to constant redefinition dictated by social patterns of cultural value which are not egalitarian in nature (Fraser, 1999, p. 35). As feminist interpretations of emotional capital suggest, there are gender-differentiated obstacles for the recognition of value. In order to be recognized as capital, emotional skills should be acknowledged as acquired and accumulated competencies. Beverly Skeggs (2004) has remarked that only some can utilize their skills as a property of the self. The self is always located by prior historical classificatory schemes of value, which enable and constrain what can be used as a resource and asset. Women are forced to use the gendered attributes by which they are positioned; their skills are naturalized as part of their selves and cannot be used and exchanged as a capital. Many social workers and nurses in my data regard their emotional skills as a professional resource and an asset of an occupational group regardless of the often repeated assumptions of the femininity of emotions and caring in general discussion. Since male characteristics have been privileged, while female ones have been denigrated during the history of professionalism, it is understandable that these occupational groups, too, prefer talking about professionalism in a sex-neutral way. However, these occupations are female-dominated and feminine characteristics are inscribed in the ideals of professionalism in this field, even if they are not explicitly labeled as ‘feminine’. The disposition to care is culturally assigned as a feminine activity and, as such, devalued. The same goes with the management of emotions. As women are supposed to be more accomplished managers of emotions than men, women’s emotional skills are regarded as a natural advantage of their sex. Emotional skills tend to get marginalized as those which a predominantly female profession ‘naturally’ possesses. Emotional skills are supposed to be inherent competencies of femininity, and gendered attributes – something that does not concern professional skills or competencies, but rather derive from natural advantages or gendered attributes which should not receive recognition or reward (Aldridge, 1994; Bowden, 1996; Smith & Gray, 2000). In terms of social advancement and social position, emotional skills seem to result in emotional capital only in a restricted sense, regardless of the implicit status difference between the capable professional and the needy
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client. Since emotional capital means investment in both oneself and the others, the exchange between the employees and the clients may be experienced as unfair and, thus, as an act arousing feelings of anger. In exchanging professionalism with non-violence, one gains professional competence and moral worth, but, on the other hand, one’s sense of social place is violated. Contrary to Bourdieu, I argue that subjects never fully occupy or identify with norms, and that there is ambivalence at the very heart of inclination. Moral subjectivity is formed by different symbolic systems, which may operate both in accordance with and in contradiction to each other. In general, my informants value their emotional effort as a resource, but sometimes they devalue it as a sign of social inferiority. In these cases, the experiences of anger may be an expression of an alternative value system, albeit one not easily recognized or authorized at work. The expressions of anger towards clients are often condemned as unprofessional misbehavior. One nurse tells us: It would be morally wrong to show your anger to your patients even if you were provoked to do that. It would be unprofessional to do so; you are not supposed to shout at your patients.
This illustrates the working of power in emotional capital through exclusion and inclusion of different emotions. Emotions are constructed as capital by managing them according to their suitability for the values of the field. Obviously, the feelings of anger – as a criticism of the central values of the relationship between an employee and a client – may be excluded from the agenda, and those expressing their anger are excluded from the sense of professional competence. Besides self-control, the expressions of anger are sometimes controlled collectively by colleagues and superiors as acts ‘violating the unspoken rules of the community’. In such situations, it appears as if professional success might be realized at the cost of emotional wellbeing. Although the employees stress that they gain professional sense of moral worth by controlling anger, some of them experience it distressing not to be able to express their feelings of injustice. However, many employees compensate for their sense of social injustice by emphasizing the significance of the more private sense of moral worthiness. Even in relationships of relative powerlessness people can develop effective and adequate modes of behavior, just as they are able to manage moral dilemmas and find ways of solving complex moral questions. In spite of the pitfalls in managing one’s anger, some employees feel it is an extra
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challenge to their moral agency and professional competence rather than a drawback of their work. As a nurse says: In a way, I think it is challenging to test how I can handle my feelings aroused by this particular situation in a professional manner, for me it is a challenge for my skills rather than a distressing matter as such. It is something that makes this work even more meaningful and interesting. And when I get the situation sorted out in a way that feels good for the patient, I feel great, too. I think ‘yes, I managed it!’
Another possibility is that an employee does not suppress her feelings of anger, but expresses her anger to a client in a ‘constructive’ way which has ethical aims. One social worker told me: Sometimes I even tell the client that I am really angry with you, because of your behavior, and I feel sorry for that because it makes it difficult for me to help you. Then we might be able to discuss the client’s point of view and it may help me to understand him and his needs better. And the client may realize that I am a human being capable of feelings, too. The most important thing is how you express your feelings and for what purpose, I mean do you really want to get things sorted out, or are you just expressing your own frustrations in a selfish way. These are the situations where your professionalism is really put to a test.
In Sevenhuijsen’s (1998, p. 62) opinion, the moral subjects in the ethics of care should not separate negative emotions, such as anger, from their experience. People who care for themselves and others cannot escape these emotions, even if they often form the reverse side of moral virtuousness. Considering the question of ‘how to act well’ means being prepared to examine the awkward aspects and ambivalences of human existence. The acceptance of the ambiguity and complexity of moral experience means that the stable, complete and unlimited self of universal ethic makes place for a multiple and ambiguous moral self, who is aware of his or her own limitations, dependencies, vulnerability, and finiteness, and who is prepared to accept responsibility for these things. In fact, the capability to scrutinize moral and ethical issues related to one’s negative emotions represents a more elaborated emotional competence than the tendency to totally exclude negative emotions from one’s experience.
CONCLUSIONS According to my data, care professionals use their emotional skills as a resource in dealing with angry clients. These emotional skills include the ability to interpret the emotional state of the clients and the appropriate ways of responding to them. The professionals are proud of their ability to
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manage their own emotions and to have a positive effect on the client’s emotional state. This emotional management is motivated by the central values that are pursued in work: in order to care for and about the clients, the care workers have to find out the real needs of the clients, and the care workers can respond to these needs only by creating a positive caring relationship between themselves and their clients. Broadly speaking, emotional capital is a resource that translates into the ability to do one’s job in a way that is consistent with the central values of one’s work. Within the caring context, emotional capital is a capability of using one’s emotions in a way that promotes the well-being of the client. The combination of the concepts ‘emotional capital’ and ‘ethics of care’ has enabled me to point out the simultaneousness of personal and collective benefits of emotion management in caring work. Although the professionspecific ethics – the ethics of care – is characterized by a moral responsibility for actions that provide for clients’ needs or well-being, the capability to fulfill these responsibilities is internalized as a valuable and desirable aspect of the employee’s professional competence, and not experienced as a dutiful obedience to some externally imposed rules and regulations. The concept ‘emotional capital’ illuminates the way in which these emotional skills are socially acquired dispositions, which both persuade and enable subjects to use these skills as assets in a particular field. Unlike ‘emotional labor’, which emphasizes the costs of emotional management, ‘emotional capital’ has made it possible to point out the symbolic goods – a sense of professional competence and moral worth – that make the emotional effort accompanied with emotional management worthwhile. In this way, the theoretical combination of ‘emotional capital’ and ‘ethics of care’ explains why caring professionals do not understand themselves as exploited or self-sacrificed when they manage their emotions for the good of the clients. Although the caring relationships are not equal or reciprocal in nature, employees derive a meaningful sense of moral worthiness and professional success from their ability to make a difference by contributing to their clients’ well-being in virtue of their emotional skills. As the ideals of caring form an important part of a person’s moral ideal, the management of emotions in a way that is compatible with these ideals can be a source of self-realization and a satisfying activity. This does not, however, cancel out the possibility that a hierarchical relationship between those needing care and those delivering care, and those capable of managing one’s emotions and those not capable of it, is formed as an unintended by-product of the very ideals of caring and professional emotion management. The management of emotions in accordance with the ideals of care affirms the social
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position of the employee as an emotionally competent and morally superior person, and sometimes the management of emotion may defend both the interest of the clients’ well-being and the employees’ own self-interest. The simultaneousness of ‘emotional capital’ and ‘ethics of care’ shows that altruism and egoism are not necessarily situated in different registers of moral behavior, but are sometimes related to each other. In spite of the egoistic dimension of the emotional capital, emotionally competent professionals are not self-determined or self-sufficient moral agents. As both the theory on emotional capital and the feminist ethics of care suggest, the ability to use one’s emotional skills as assets is formed in specific cultural and historical contexts. Although the accumulated emotional competence can be used as a personal resource, the socially constituted professional ideals of the caring professions organize the management of one’s emotions and the ways in which this management can be used as a resource for acting well in one’s profession. At its worst, ‘emotional capital’ could be used to explain the motivations of subjects entirely in terms of capital accumulation strategies and instrumental action. The temptation to act on the premises of the rational choice theory is indeed one downfall of using economist’s metaphors such as capital. However, if emotional capital is reduced to a set of assets and skills which are used strategically for one’s advancement in a voluntary way, the theory of habitus is misunderstood. Emotional capital mobilizes the least reflexive aspects of habitus, and it is through habitus that social reproduction takes place. The structures and relations of power do not exist ‘out there’, removed from the individuals, but are rather embodied in the smooth workings of habitus. In this exploratory study, I have emphasized both the socially formed and the socially conditioned nature of emotional capital. Bourdieu’s formulation of capital allows for an understanding of the inter-linkage between emotional capital, forms of social struggle and social inequalities better than, for example, the concept ‘emotional intelligence’. Through ‘emotional capital’, one can examine the shifting power positions that characterize the emotional competencies produced in encountering annoyed clients in caring work. In this way, the otherwise implicit aspects of gender and class (the low status associated with female-dominated caring occupations, on the one hand, and the social position as middle-class experts and skillful managers of emotions, on the other) are made visible by using the concept. Together with the concept ‘ethics of care’, ‘emotional capital’ illuminates the ambivalences and contradictions involved in the accumulation and use of emotional capital. The devaluation of caring work and the emotional skills involved in it may produce feelings of anger towards clients. Care as a
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social and moral activity implies not only dealing with feelings of empathy and sympathy, but also dealing with feelings of anger and aggression. As I have proposed earlier in this article, the moral subject can be considered a multiple and ambiguous agent, who is ready to recognize his or her own limitations, dependencies, and vulnerability and the contradictions involved in caring relationships. This, in its turn, demands extra emotional effort and capability to deal with continually occurring moral dilemmas that arise when the moral agents try to find balance between their own needs and those of the persons receiving care. This is one of the contradictions with which the caring professionals have to deal with, and which requires a sophisticated capacity to find solutions to complex moral dilemmas and, thus, to function ethically at one’s work. Moreover, this is one of the aspects of emotional capital in caring work which needs to be analyzed more profoundly in the future.
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CHAPTER 12 HOW ‘BAD APPLES’ SPOIL THE BUNCH: FAULTLINES, EMOTIONAL LEVERS, AND EXCLUSION IN THE WORKPLACE Charmine E. J. Ha¨rtel and Debra Panipucci ABSTRACT Just as a rotten apple makes other apples around it begin to decay, so too can people influence others within their vicinity, particularly in terms of destructive emotions and behaviors. Trevino and Youngblood (1990) adopted the term ‘bad apples’ to describe individuals who engage in unethical behaviors and who also influence others to behave in a similar manner. In this chapter, the ‘bad apple’ metaphor is adopted to describe the employee whose actions and interactions create and maintain destructive faultlines and unethical exclusion behaviors that negatively impact the emotional well-being and effective and ethical performance of the team. In particular, the chapter examines the way in which ‘bad apples’ use destructive emotion management skills through the manipulation of emotional levers of others, what motivates them to do so and the implications it may have on management.
Functionality, Intentionality and Morality Research on Emotion in Organizations, Volume 3, 287–310 Copyright r 2007 by Elsevier Ltd. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1746-9791/doi:10.1016/S1746-9791(07)03012-X
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INTRODUCTION This chapter is based upon the view that it is not the existence of diversity that splits the group, but rather the behavior of the individuals within the group (cf. Ha¨rtel & Fujimoto, 2000). In support, Proudford and Smith (2003) found that it is not the mere presence of diversity that creates conflicts and negative emotions in the workplace, but rather the pattern of interactions among group identifications that fragment the group. To this end, the purpose of this chapter is to look at how individuals utilize their emotion management skills to create divisions in workgroups, and what motivates them to engage in such behavior. In order to better serve this purpose, the chapter is divided into four sections. The first section aims to conceptualize the notion of a ‘bad apple’ and identify its style of operation within an organizational context, specifically in relation to unethical exclusion of group members. The second section of this chapter addresses what motivates the behavior of ‘bad apples’ and examines the underlying purpose of their actions. The third section critically analyzes the way in which ‘bad apples’ execute their emotion management skills by pulling different emotional levers of others. The fourth and final section of this chapter discusses the overall arguments presented in the chapter and provides the implications and future directions for both researchers and managers.
ONE BAD APPLE CAN SPOIL THE BUNCH Who are the ‘Bad Apples’? Farmers have long known that one ‘bad apple’, undetected, can spoil the bunch. Apples that are overripe produce ethylene gas, which causes nearby apples to ripen too quickly and spoil. That is why it is important to identify apples with bruises and decay so that they can be removed from storage and good apples can be kept for later use (Warmund, 2004). The phenomenon of ‘bad apples’ causing other apples around them to decay has been translated into organizational behavior to illustrate that people can influence others within their vicinity to engage in counterproductive and unethical behavior (Trevino & Youngblood, 1990). In this chapter, the notion of a ‘bad apple’ is used to describe individuals who act and interact in ways that obstruct inclusive work practices; and also influence others to create divisive faultlines among group members. Therefore, when bad apples operate in organizations,
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the subsequent results can be unnecessary divisions in the workgroup, intragroup conflict, and isolation of individuals at work. Based on the above conceptualization, it is argued that bad apples can be distinguished from the rest due to the following three attributes: (1) creation of divisive faultlines; (2) unethical exclusion of work-colleagues; and (3) destructive use of emotion management skills. Each of these characteristics will be looked at next. Creation of Divisive Faultlines Faultlines are ‘‘the hypothetical dividing lines that may split a group into subgroups based on one or more attributes’’ (Earley & Mosakowski, 2000, p. 28). This impacts on the degree to which group members feel included, or a part of critical group processes, or excluded from such processes (Mor Barak, 2000). The feeling of being excluded evokes conflict, stress, and tension in people all over the world (Killen, Lee-Kim, McGlothlin, & Stangor, 2002). Past research offers a number of explanations regarding the formation of faultlines and the psychological basis of inter-group discrimination (e.g., similarity-attraction theory, social identity theory and self-categorization theory). However, the present context in which faultlines are evaluated in relation to bad apples can be distinguished from the previous research based on a number of factors. Firstly, as opposed to the faultlines that appear due to psychological self-categorization by individuals themselves into different groups; the divisive faultlines mentioned here are a product of an individual, dividing a group underhandedly according to their own will. Therefore, divisive faultlines in this context are not naturally occurring phenomena due to psychological evaluation of self and others; on the contrary, they are a product of willful exclusion of some members of a workgroup based on a hypothetical difference developed and maintained by the bad apples in an organization, and those who are influenced by them. Past studies tend to associate faultlines with a weak point in the group based on an unbalanced level of characteristics (e.g., when a group consists of four males and one female). In this chapter, the term faultlines is used to represent any factor that can divide the group into two segments, whether this is a characteristic of the group members, or an emotional lever. We propose, then, that faultlines derive from a dividing issue that splits the group into subgroups. Faultlines shift members’ group-related identities to their respective subgroups affecting the level of social integration and cohesion within the group. Group members, therefore, are more likely to communicate and share information within their subgroup rather than across the subgroups.
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An example of such a divisive faultline can be found in organizations where women are marginalized and treated differently from men, or where workers in the same occupation are treated differently according to their social class background. Unethical Exclusion of Work-Colleagues Unethical exclusion of individuals occurs simultaneously where divisive faultlines are present. Unethical exclusion refers to instances where an individual is not given an opportunity to participate due to a non-job related characteristic that differentiates him or her from the rest of the group. The non-job related characteristic could be a difference relating to gender, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, etc. This is different from ethical exclusion of individuals in organizations, where the exclusion is based on legitimate job-related reasons; for example, job performance, qualifications, skills, experience, organizational policy, etc. Furthermore, not giving ‘an opportunity to participate’ refers to both work-related and non-work related participation of individuals in an organization. Non-work related participation includes such things as general office conversations, functions, celebrations, etc. To this end, it can be argued that the basis of exclusion as well as the scope and nature of the exclusion contributes to the differentiation between ethical and unethical exclusion of people at work. As such, in the case of ethical exclusion, even though a person has been excluded from participating in a particular project due to a lack of experience, s/he will not be excluded in social settings, or from other projects for which experience is not a key selection criterion. To reiterate the point, the crux of unethical exclusion is that it isolates an individual from work and non-work related activities based on divisive faultlines. In reality, unethical exclusions cannot be distinguished from divisive faultlines due to their co-occurrence. However, what can be observed in organizations is that both divisive faultlines and unethical exclusion are premeditated efforts of certain individuals, (i.e., bad apples as we refer to them in this chapter) who exclude certain members of the workgroup and compel others to follow pursuit. The way in which bad apples engage in such behavior is through managing their own and others’ emotions. Destructive Use of Emotional Management Skills The importance of people’s influence on their own emotions and that of others around them has been established solidly in both academia and
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practice (Hochschild, 1983). As the following quote illustrates, emotional displays can be controlled, manipulated, and changed: A substantial part of interaction involves interpreting one’s own and other people’s emotional reactions, predicting reactions from antecedent events, controlling emotional expressions, attempting to influence others’ emotions and sharing and talking about emotional reactions to past and present events (Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson, & O’Connor, 1987, p. 1062).
As these emotion management skills can be used to induce emotional responses in another person, it can be viewed as a process of influence (Gibson & Schroeder, 2002). In order to divide a workgroup, the instigator, or ‘bad apple’, can manipulate people’s emotions. Emotion management skills can be used to manipulate who becomes part of what group through the creation of faultlines. The term – ‘emotion management skills’ refers to the ability to control and influence one’s own and other’s emotions. The basis for such skills is emotional intelligence (EI). The most accepted scholarly definition of EI is that of Salovey and Mayer (1990). They defined EI as ‘‘the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions’’ (p. 189). EI comprises four factors, namely, the ability to accurately identify and express emotions, an understanding of how emotions affect information search and use as well as problem-solving, the ability to accurately analyze the meaning and dynamics of emotional processes, and the ability to regulate one’s own and other’s emotions. Within the literature on emotion management skills, it is generally assumed that such skills are desirable with rare acknowledgement that such skills may be used for destructive purposes (see Pizer & Ha¨rtel, 2004 for an exception). This suggests that the ability to perceive, understand, and process emotions (Salovey, Hsee, & Mayer, 1993; Salovey & Mayer, 1990) can be used to promote constructive emotional and intellectual growth (Kelly & Barsade, 2001, p. 104). On the other hand, it can also be used for destructive purposes, that is, to direct others’ emotional and intellectual growth towards specific goals that undermine emancipation and value-based behavior (Pizer & Ha¨rtel, 2004) such as through the creation of faultlines. The ‘bad apple’ draws on his or her emotion management skills to gain an understanding of, and cognitively map, the other group members’ emotional characteristics. The ‘bad apple’ then uses these as levers to influence the group members’ thought patterns, emotions, and actions. Through these levers, he or she makes it clear to the target group member that in order to
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join the group (i.e., become part of the in-group and not be ostracized) they must converge to the thoughts and actions of the group, as demonstrated by the ‘bad apple’. This enables the ‘bad apple’ to draw a boundary around the group he or she wants to be designated with in-group status at the exclusion of those he or she wants to see designated with out-group status. The boundary then tends to be maintained as conflict and negative affect are more likely to occur along the group faultline (Lau & Murnighan, 1998), thus creating a self-reinforcing vicious cycle (Ha¨rtel, Kibby, & Pizer, 2003). The destructive use of emotion management skills can provide the bad apple with power and influence over others; however, this does not mean that bad apples can only be found in leadership or managerial roles; on the contrary a bad apple can exist at any level in an organization. For instance, a manager can be made to feel as much excluded and isolated at work as any other person, perhaps by not including him or her in general conversations. In such cases, although the manager has authoritative power over the bad apple, by pulling the specific emotional levers, the bad apple has exerted emotional power over the manager by compelling him to do things that are necessary for him to be considered a part of the team or avoid negative reprisals. Thus a key characteristic of a bad apple is the manipulation of other individuals through emotional management skills. The victims of such manipulation could include subordinates, colleagues, supervisors, and clients. Emotional power and influence will be looked at in more detail in the following section.
WHAT MOTIVATES BAD APPLES TO DO WHAT THEY DO? The Desire to Influence The desire to influence has been linked to the desire and perception of wielding power. Gibson and Schroeder (2002) reviewed the literature on conceptual models of social influence and suggested that the motivation to influence another stems from a cost–benefit analysis and an assessment of the available sources of power over the target. They defined the perception of power as ‘‘the extent to which the agent believes he or she is instrumental to the achievement of a target’s goals’’ (p. 186). In line with this, a bad apple’s purpose for influencing the group is to bring about a desired change that would not have otherwise occurred. In doing this, they assess their goals, sources of power over the target, and the target’s potential resistance.
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Based on this analysis, the bad apple can then configure the best combination of emotional levers that must be pulled in order to make a person vulnerable or susceptible to his or her demands. For instance, not all people get equally affected by social exclusion, as some individuals may have better coping skills than others. In such cases, the bad apple may pull a different emotional lever by including a person that the target dislikes rather than excluding the target. With the change in group dynamics, the target may now be more willing to accommodate to the bad apple’s demands in order to be in the in-group with the bad apple, rather than be in the out-group with the person s/he dislikes. Therefore the ultimate motive of the bad apple is to influence the target into accepting the norms and behavior that is dictated by the bad apple. Competitive Irrationality A second motive that can explain a bad apple’s behavior is competitive irrationality. Arnett and Hunt (2002) conceived of the concept of competitive irrationality to describe individuals with a ‘‘focus on damaging the profits of competitors, rather than improving their own profit performance’’ (p. 279). Individuals compete on a number of fronts, including for task, social, and emotional control. The competitive irrational person believes that success will be obtained through the demise of the persons perceived as competing for their desired goals (Arnett & Hunt, 2002). Thus, the ‘bad apple’ is focused on removing a person from the interaction, rather than focusing on their own performance in the group or the goals and tasks of the group; hence the misuse of their own emotion management skills. The notion of competitive irrationality suggests that an individual’s motivation to create a faultline and engage in unethical exclusion is not always rational. The rational motives for engaging in unethical exclusion are a product of cognitive analysis of costs and benefits. However, as individuals are susceptible to bounded rationality, the motives behind a bad apple’s behavior cannot only be explained in rational terms. In fact, it is proposed that such motives can also be emotionally charged and irrational. Emotionally charged motives could stem from emotional states like jealousy, anxiety, and fear. An example of this could be that the bad apple may want to exclude a high performing person from a group due to pure jealousy, in spite of the targeted individual’s contribution to the overall group performance. In such a scenario, the rationality of having a high performing person in one’s in-group has been overpowered by personal jealousy. Therefore it can be argued that competitive irrationality could well be a motive that compels a
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bad apple to develop a group faultline intending to exclude a member/s from the group.
HOW BAD APPLES INFLUENCE OTHERS A model of the process of manipulating people via their emotional levers is proposed based on Raven’s (1993) power/interaction model (see Fig. 1), where the process involves such factors as a motivator, assessment of the situation, risk analysis, and review of feedback. This suggests that, due to rational (cognitive) and irrational (emotional) reasons for influencing others, the ‘bad apple’ will be motivated to create and maintain a faultline. He or she then assesses the potential success/failure and costs of influencing the target. To strategize the influence, the ‘bad apple’ uses his or her emotion management skills first to understand the target’s emotional levers. Next, the ‘bad apple’ selects the emotional lever (mode of influence) and attempts to manipulate the target. The ‘bad apple’ then assesses the effect of the influence and finally re-adjusts based on the feedback of the influence attempt. Importance of Understanding the Target’s Emotional Levers The ability to emotionally influence others in the manner described above can be a powerful tool to direct people’s behavior. Using the correct emotional lever for an individual can make them conform unconsciously and even deny the evidence of their own eyes. For instance, the experiments conducted by Asch (1951) involved the emotional need to conform, which was a strong enough lever to make participants give an incorrect answer to a perception test, when they knew it was not the correct answer. The emotional Motivation to create faultline
Evaluation of influence attempt
Target assessment and selection
Emotional labor selection
Fig. 1.
The Process of Manipulating People.
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lever, in essence, acts as a sedative for the target, reducing their level of thinking so that the target moves almost mindlessly to comply with the influence attempt (cf. Drake & Moberg, 1986). Stated differently, the bad apple compels the target to act in an emotionally charged manner in which the target would not have otherwise acted under normal circumstances. Thus, by pulling certain emotional levers, the bad apple reduces the cognitive decision-making ability of the target, and manipulates the target into behaving in ways that are favored by the bad apple. The process of understanding the target has a dual role. It not only enables the ‘bad apple’ to select the emotional levers best fitted to the target, it also enables him or her to select the specific group members around whom to draw a boundary. The ability of the ‘bad apple’ to carefully select the individuals forming the in-group enables him or her to assess who is unlikely to dissent or disrupt the group’s (or bad apple’s) goals. Dissent to creation of the faultline and, hence, the influence of a ‘bad apple’ is also minimized through the processes of self-selection and submission. For instance, if the desired values and behaviors cannot be instilled in the target, the target is likely to decide to exit the group or to participate in the group without indicating his or her disagreement (Wolkomir, 2001). These responses are congruent with the literature on bullying, which shows that the victim is often pushed out of the organization as the people exhibiting the negative behaviors are rarely identified as being the problem; rather the tendency is to view the victim as creating the issue (Einarsen, 1999). Next, we discuss common emotional levers ‘bad apples’ may detect and influence via their emotion management skills which result in the development and maintenance of destructive faultlines. Emotional Levers As stated earlier, the ‘bad apple’ is able to manipulate the creation or salience of the dividing issue, and, hence, the faultline, through emotional levers specific to each member of the group. People do what others want them to do more often than they realize (Kaplan & Krueger, 1999). These influences can be cognitive or emotional and are often outside the individual’s awareness and sometimes against their self-interests. Indeed, Hogg and Vaughan (1998), in their review of crowd behavior, suggested that the leader of the crowd evokes collective action by controlling people’s unconsciousness and guiding their actions. The ‘bad apple’ uses these same mechanisms, but with destructive consequences.
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Table 1. Common Levers that Influence People. The Levers (1) one’s need to belong or to feel needed (2) the desire to have one’s beliefs and behaviors affirmed (3) one’s empathy (4) the desire to have a characteristic or possession that only the group or group leader offers (5) the promise of emotional relief and fulfillment (6) the desire to avoid negative consequences (7) the desire to avoid responsibility and accountability (8) the idolization of the leader, or an ideal that the group symbolizes (9) a disposition characterized by interpersonal trust
A number of different levers are used by the ‘bad apple’ to manipulate group members and achieve the faultline. Common levers are listed in Table 1. Past research has shown that persuasion works by appealing to deeply rooted human drives and needs (Cialdini, 2001, p. 72). This ability to persuade others is often viewed as an art; a natural gift; which is often unconscious to the possessor. Yet, the possessor recognizes that the key to persuasion lies in the ability to appeal to others (Cialdini, 2001). In this way, the ‘bad apple’ understands that manipulating another person to act in a certain way is not simply a matter of presenting the facts. Rather, he or she recognizes that it is more important to understand the person’s beliefs and emotional needs and to appeal to these accordingly. The ‘bad apple’ uses these levers to appeal to group members to limit their exercise of thinking and free choice and ultimately influence an act or idea within the group. A discussion on each of the ten levers is presented in detail next. Lever 1 – The Need to Belong or Feel Needed The ‘bad apple’ can influence the target and create the faultline by drawing on the well-documented human need to belong (Pizer & Ha¨rtel, 2004; Simon et al., 1997). The need to belong to a group or community has been a generally accepted human need. The Freudian need for attachment, competition for resources, and the desire to protect and defend oneself against external threats, comprise the set of drivers underlying this need (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Yet, the need to belong is different from the need for affiliation. Just having contact with others ‘‘can go only so far in promoting one’s general well-being and would do little to satisfy the need to belong’’ (Baumeister & Leary, 1995, p. 500). The ‘bad apple’ can manipulate this need through enlisting the aid or endorsement of other group members and, hence, influence
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the target through their desire to ‘fit in’ and be part of the in-group (Falbe & Yukl, 1992). The need to belong is a powerful emotional lever as it can evoke both positive and negative emotions. Baumeister and Leary (1995) posit that positive emotions result from the formation of social bonds, while negative emotions arise when social bonds are broken, threatened, or refused. Therefore, the ‘bad apple’ can pull this emotional lever through either enhancing positive emotions by providing a sense of belonging and acceptance or through threatening the negative emotions associated with not belonging or being rejected. The former is achieved through manipulating a sense of ‘collective identity’ through the expression of shared emotions. This enables the target to feel part of a community and to establish a sense of ‘‘we-ness’’ (Pizer & Ha¨rtel, 2004; Wolkomir, 2001) that does not include the individuals the ‘bad apple’ wants to exclude. Alternatively, the ‘bad apple’ can emotionally manipulate the target individual by provoking the negative emotions that arise when ostracism from the group is threatened. A powerful pressure to conform is the fear of becoming an outcast (Asch, 1952). Thus, faultlines may be established within a group through creating an affinity for the ingroup and social distance from the out-group (Wolkomir, 2001, p. 322). This technique is a key feature of cult-like groups (Pizer & Ha¨rtel, 2004). Lever 2 – Seeking Affirmation People are motivated to seek social approval from others to add validity and confidence to their own values and beliefs (Lau & Murnighan, 1998; Wolkomir, 2001). ‘‘The certainty with which we hold views lies in the amount of agreement we encounter for those views’’ (Hogg & Vaughan, 1998, p. 224). Therefore, the threat of ostracism hinders one’s ability to maintain the belief that they are good and worthy people (Williams & Sommer, 1997). This source of support and verification for the individual’s values, beliefs, and actions is an important motivation over and above the individual’s own self-confidence. People seek achievements that are recognized by others (Baumeister & Leary, 1995, p. 498). This means that the ‘bad apple’ is able to emotionally manipulate group members through appearing to support their attitudes and actions and, hence set up a trap based on their desire to be a part of the in-group and maintain their sense of self-worth. Further, based on social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986), individuals strive to achieve a positive self-identity through holding favorable comparisons of the similar people in their in-group. This means that cooperation to form a subgroup is not opposed as individuals tend to categorize themselves with similar others reinforcing their own sense of identity (Ashmore & Lee,
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1997). People shift unconsciously from this collective identity through the cognitive process of depersonalization. This refers to the situation where the individual shifts from their individual self-identity, redefining themselves in terms of the stereotypical group characteristics (Ashmore & Lee, 1997). The individual then adopts the traits, attitudes, and behaviors of the similar group or ‘bad apple’. Subsequently, the ‘bad apple’ is able to segregate the team by facilitating the establishment of a positive social identity among in-group members, and hence, favoritism and support towards members of the ingroup (Brehmer, 1976; Tajfel & Turner, 1986) to the detriment of individuals in the out-group, thus, enhancing exclusivity. Lever 3 – An Empathic Disposition Closely related to sympathy and similar to pity, empathy refers to the ability to understand the feelings of other people, to provide emotional support and to understand the relationship between other people’s emotions and behavior (Rahim et al., 2002). Some theorists believe that empathy is a relatively stable trait or ability in a person (Sawyer, 1975). That is, some people have a better ability to perceive the feelings of others; they have an ‘‘empathic disposition’’ (Hogan, 1969, p. 309). Yet, the ‘bad apple’ may emotionally manipulate this characteristic in group members with the ‘empathic disposition’. While, understanding perspectives different from your own and empathizing with other people is important to working with others (Parker & Axtell, 2001), it can become an emotional lever when a ‘bad apple’ is able to evoke the empathizers identification with the bad apple’s situation. The ‘bad apple’ can evoke this identification by displaying emotions that create the impression of vulnerability and being misunderstood or exploited. Research in consumer behavior has ascertained that emotional appeals are a highly successful means to persuasion (Aaker & Williams, 1998). Salesmen, in particular, are encouraged to use a customer’s empathetic disposition to manipulate them into action (see ‘‘The Art of Winning Conversation’’ by Morey Stettner, 1995 or ‘‘Secrets of Closing Sales’’ by Alexander & Roth, 1995). Therefore, empathy can be an important lever used by the ‘bad apple’ to create a faultline within the group through manipulating a person to identify and understand the in-group’s perspective (or the ‘bad apple’). Lever 4 – Acquisition of Group Features People may also be motivated to join the in-group because of what it promises to achieve, over and above that which other groups can achieve (Wolkomir, 2001). In an organizational group, this promise could be the attainment of power, status, security, and promotional opportunities, for as
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the saying goes ‘it’s not what you know it’s who you know’. In support, Ferris et al. (1996, p. 72) argued that the exclusion of certain individuals ‘‘results in some individuals building a knowledge base and developing the skills’’ needed to succeed in the organization and others not. People who join the in-group are drawn by the promise that they will be transformed into being in the position they always wanted to be in. Further, even if the person feels that they have the potential to achieve their desired goals on their own, the emotional promise can ‘‘hook’’ them despite their skepticism, compelling people ‘‘to stay and consider the group’s ideological message’’ (Wolkomir, 2001, p. 315). The perception of the in-group as a means to attaining these factors, will increase motivation to be a part of the in-group (Fujimoto, Ha¨rtel, & Ha¨rtel, 2004) and, thus, is an important lever to be used by the ‘bad apple’ to manipulate the person and establish the faultline. Lever 5 – Promise of Emotional Relief and Fulfillment A group also wields power over others by giving the perception that ‘‘if you become one of us, then all those terrible feelings you have been wrestling with will dissipate’’ (Wolkomir, 2001, p. 315). Wolkomir (2001) found that the power support groups have over existing and new individual members is due to the promise of emotional relief. In support, Schrock, Holden, and Reid (2004) determined that transgendered people joined support groups seeking relief from shame, fear, powerlessness, alienation, and inauthenticity. Emotional relief can follow from the actual influence process. For instance, positive emotions are evoked from simply conforming to influence attempts, while negative emotions such as anxiety tend to follow non-conformance due to the social pressure of being perceived as a non-conformant (Tarnow, 1996). This indicates that the ‘bad apple’ can create faultlines through enhancing the potential for emotional relief or fulfillment that can be derived from being part of the in-group, and conformity to the bad apple’s influence attempt itself can present a sense of relief for the target. Lever 6 – Avoidance of Negative Consequences Research in social psychology has shown that a powerful factor promoting obedience over disobedience is the fear of negative consequences, such as fear of censure, ridicule, social disapproval, or being stigmatized or condemned (Hogg & Vaughan, 1998). This fear can arise from the amount of power (personal or from their position in the organization) attributed to the ‘bad apple’ (Yukl, Kim, & Falbe, 1996). Power has been defined as the ability to get one’s own way even in the face of opposition (Peiro´ & Melia´, 2003). French and Raven (1959) classified power as expert, legitimate, referent,
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reward, or coercive power. These types of power point to ways in which the ‘bad apple’ can manipulate other group members, such as by providing special knowledge and opinions (expert power), by giving the impression that he or she has the right to prescribe behavior (legitimate), by engendering trust and admiration from the group member (referent), or by giving the impression that he or she has the ability to distribute rewards (reward power) or punishment (coercive power) (Hay & Ha¨rtel, 2000). Thus, the ‘bad apple’ can instill this fear through demands, threats, frequent checking, or persistent reminders (Falbe & Yukl, 1992). The ‘bad apple’ can also manipulate this emotional lever through the display of negative emotions or the suppression of all emotion. For instance, the expression of anger is a powerful form of influence as it demonstrates the agent’s power and instills a level of fear and intimidation in the receiving individual (Gibson & Schroeder, 2002). The display of anger tends to reduce target resistance through the arousal of undesirable negative feelings (Gibson & Schroeder, 2002). This is especially so if the target desires to become or to remain emotionally and otherwise part of the in-group. Further, the expression of ‘irrationality’ as is associated with outbursts of negative emotion, ‘‘help(s) convince targets that the agent is willing to take great risks that could hurt both parties if the agent does not get what he or she wants’’ (Gibson & Schroeder, 2002, p. 202). Similarly, the suppression of all emotion can indicate to followers that an individual is in control by working off the commonly held assumptions that the display of emotions is a sign of weakness (cf. Gibson & Schroeder, 2002) or irrationality (Ha¨rtel, Zerbe, & Ashkanasy, 2004; Styhre et al., 2002). Therefore, the ‘bad apple’ can play on a group member’s fear of negative consequences by managing his or her own display of emotions and, thus, achieve manipulation of the target’s thoughts, feelings, and actions. Wolkomir (2001) found, when looking at religious support groups, that leaders minimized dissent quickly through employing interpersonal emotion management strategies. In particular, these leaders sanctioned the discrepant emotion or reshaped the conversation to discredit the speaker, deliberately manipulating other group members’ emotions to alienate the dissenting party rather than risking the introduction of doubt. This fear is most effective as a form of manipulation when the individual perceives low levels of psychological safety at work. Psychological safety refers to ‘‘feeling able to show and employ one’s self without fear of negative consequences to self-image, status, or career’’ (Kahn, 1990, p. 708). When individuals do not feel safe they are not able to express their true selves at work. A psychologically unsafe work environment exists when situations are
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ambiguous, unpredictable and threatening (May, Gilson, & Harter, 2004). Therefore, a powerful tool that can be used by the ‘bad apple’ to secure support is the use of negative emotion management strategies aimed at minimizing dissent (cf. Pizer & Ha¨rtel, 2004), particularly when the environment is psychologically unsafe. Lever 7 – Avoidance of Responsibility and Accountability Belonging to a group means that the individual transfers their primary identity from the self to the group, thereby reducing the view of themselves and their actions as ‘individual’. Holding a strong identification with the group can either make the individual feel responsible for his or her actions, in the sense that he or she is acting on behalf of the group (Rosenberg & Trevin˜o, 2003), or alternatively it can reduce attributions of personal responsibility for outcomes (Hewstone, 1990). Belonging to a group means several things: it creates a sense of belonging, but it also creates the opportunity of free riding on the efforts and collective action achieved by the rest of the group. It means creating cohesion among a subset of people, but it also means excluding outsiders of the benefits created by the co-operation emerging from such cohesion (Cardenas, 2000, p. 306).
The idea that individuals join a group to be absolved from responsibility and accountability for their actions is not a new one. Relinquishing a sense of personal responsibility for destructive activities was proven in Milgram’s (1963) experiments on shock treatment. The above quote also suggests that through conforming to influence and joining the group, the individual also dilutes his or her performance responsibility. This suggests that through rationalizing actions to the group behavior, the ‘bad apple’ will be able to manipulate the target to engage in actions that may be in opposition to the individual’s normal behaviors, such as exclusion and the creation of subgroups, simply through justifying the deferral of responsibility to the group. Lever 8 – Idolization of the Leader/Ideal of the Group Certain individuals may be manipulated to identify strongly with the leader of the group or the ideals underlying the group’s actions. The individuals who are susceptible to this emotional lever tend to have ‘‘little sense of control over the world around them, (and thus) look to and idolize a leader they believe can deal with the helplessness they feel’’ (Kroll, Toombs, & Wright, 2000, p. 120). They seek a group whose ideal or leader exerts confidence and pride in its followers and fulfills their needs of order and stability
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in their lives. This is perhaps more of a common emotional lever than people may realize. It is evident in the proliferation of fan clubs, cults, and self-help associations. This, therefore, is a powerful tool for manipulation if the ‘bad apple’ can establish that the group created has a worthy objective or pursuit, or that an association with the ‘bad apple’ will provide the target with positive emotions. Lever 9 – Interpersonal Trust Interpersonal trust is another lever the ‘bad apple’ can use to manipulate a group member. The ‘bad apple’ can use this lever by creating the impression that the group (or the ‘bad apple’) will provide both cognitive and emotional trust to the individual (May et al., 2004). This means that the ‘bad apple’ expresses a concern for the welfare of the individual (emotional trust) and emphasizes that he or she can rely and depend on the group (or ‘bad apple’), which leads the individual to believe that their interests will be best served by being part of the group. The individual is led to ‘‘believe in the ‘intrinsic virtue’ of such relationships and are willing to make future emotional investments in the relationship’’ (Pennings & Woiceshyn, 1987). The ‘bad apple’ can manipulate this lever through emotional contagion (Pugh, 2001). This means that, by expressing a positive emotion themselves, the ‘bad apple’ is able to induce a positive emotion in another person and, hence, increase his or her likeability and power. Likeability increases one’s ability to exert social influence (Cialdini, 1988) by ‘softening’ the target so that he or she is less attentive to the arguments posed by the agent (Gibson & Schroeder, 2002). The ‘bad apple’ can also increase his or her likeability and interpersonal trust by saying what the group member wants to hear. Thus, the target is motivated to join the in-group and support the faultline through trust in the ‘bad apple’.
What Factors Moderate the Bad Apple’s Influence on the Target? As discussed, the ‘bad apple’ uses his or her emotional management skills to pull the emotional levers in the target and ultimately influence the target’s thoughts, feelings, and actions. These levers exist in all people, to varying degrees. Whether the ‘bad apple’ is successful though, is impacted by the target’s mindset and capacity to impede the destructive use of the emotional levers (see Fig. 2). This mindset and capacity refers to the target’s level of cognitive moral development, locus of control, clarity of self-concept, and his or her level of emotional capacity.
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The need to belong
Seeking affirmation
Influencer’s skill in managing emotions of self and others
E M O T I O N A L L E V E R S
An empathic disposition
Moderators
Cognitive moral development Acquisition of group features
Promise of emotional relief and fulfillment
Locus of control
Clarity of self concept Passivity
Avoidance of negative consequences
Success/Failure of Influence
Avoidance of responsibility and accountability
Idealization of the leader/ideal of the group
Interpersonal trust
Fig. 2.
The Process of Influencing People.
Trevino and Youngblood (1990) found that individuals’ ethical decisionmaking behavior was influenced by both their stage of cognitive moral development (more principled individuals were more ethical) and their locus of control (individuals with an internal locus were more ethical than those with an external locus). Here, we argue that just as Trevino and
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Youngblood (1990) found cognitive moral development and locus of control to be important factors in promoting ethical behavior, so too will these factors be important in the attempt to encourage unethical behavior (although a negative relationship is predicted). Cognitive Moral Development Kohlberg’s (1969) cognitive moral development model refers to an individual’s level of reasoning in moral decision-making (Trevino, 1986). It depicts whether an individual will justify a moral choice over the outcome (Trevino, 1986). For this reason, targets with lower levels of cognitive moral development will be more likely to be influenced by the ‘bad apple’ as they are concerned with concrete and short-term consequences such as punishments and rewards rather than the moral issue underlying the faultline. In contrast, individuals with higher levels of cognitive moral development are seen as more principled, and the individual is more likely to choose actions that are in accordance with their own feelings of justice and respect for human dignity and will, thus, resist pressure to engage in unethical thoughts or activities. Locus of Control Rotter’s (1966) as cited in Trevino (1986) locus of control theory depicts whether individuals attribute events to their own efforts or to factors beyond their control. In her examination of ethical behavior, Trevino (1986) argued that a person with an external locus of control is less likely to take personal responsibility for unethical behavior and more likely to be influenced by ‘bad apples’ (cf. Spector, 1982). Therefore, targets with an internal locus of control are more likely to take responsibility for their behaviors and are thus less likely to sway when influence attempts are made on their emotional levers. In contrast, a target with an external locus of control is less likely to take personal responsibility for the consequences to others of their actions and thus will be more likely to be influenced by the pulling of their emotional levers. Clarity of Self-Concept Trevino (1986) proposed ego strength as an individual variable impacting on the likelihood of an individual acting on his or her own judgments. In this chapter, this characteristic is viewed as the clarity of self-concept. This factor refers to the ability to resist impulses and follow convictions (Trevino, 1986). It is evidenced by a certainty of perceiving factors as ‘not me’ and a minimal gap between the ideal, ought, and actual selves (Ashmore & Lee, 1997). Thus, individuals with a healthy sense of self have a clear image of their
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actual self and are less likely to act in ways that are incongruent with their true selves (a long-term orientation). Individuals lacking a clear self-concept are more likely to act merely on the basis of other’s responses to their behavior (short-term orientation) and thus would be less able to resist the influence attempts of ‘bad apples’ (Poll & Smith, 2003). Passivity of the Target Passivity is another lever ‘bad apples’ can use to manipulate a group member. Passive individuals act as an appendage to others and tend to do things for the immediate reaction and feedback they offer rather than on personal principles as they do not feel a complete person on their own or that they can stand on their own. These individuals are compelled to be attached to a person or group to which they can refer to back up their opinions (Asch, 1952, p. 498). In support of this characteristic, Asch (1952) stated that ‘‘the independent person possesses certain sources of strength within himself that enable him to bear a brief ordeal, whereas the yielding person can find safety only by merging anonymously with the group’’ (p. 498). The ‘bad apple’ manipulates the passive person by saying or doing things that build the target’s self-esteem, creating the impression that the person is doing good and being a good friend by going along with the unethical exclusion behavior and that the ‘bad apple’ is providing unconditional support. Such support, however, serves the needs of the ‘bad apple’ and has destructive consequences in the long-term for the passive target and the workgroup.
IMPLICATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH It has been argued in this chapter that emotion management skills can be used to manipulate the creation of faultlines that have destructive consequences for the emotional well-being, and effective and ethical performance of the team. The unethical use of emotion management skills was proposed as a key way in which unethical exclusion behavior can be induced in others particularly when the targets have low levels of cognitive moral development, an external locus of control, and are less clear of their own self-concept. It is not being suggested that people can be made to believe things they do not want to believe. Rather, it is argued that there are a number of emotional levers that when pulled, could encourage people to unconsciously act in accordance with the will of others. The management implications of this argument stem from the fact that team factors such as supportiveness (Gladstein, 1984), participation (Campion, Medsker, & Higgs, 1993), communication, and social
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integration (Gladstein, 1984; Moreland, 1985) have been found to relate positively to team-member satisfaction. On the other hand, performance and the devastating emotional effects of exclusion have also been welldocumented in the literature. The barriers to inclusion ‘‘can be as invisible as air. But to those who confront them daily, these barriers can be demeaning, discouraging and insurmountable’’ (Miller, 1998, p. 152). Out-group team members are more likely to perceive themselves as peripheral rather than integrated in the team (Brickson, 2000) and, hence, have higher levels of turnover (Milliken & Martins, 1996). Out-group members are not integrated in the informal social networks of the organization and are less likely to learn of advancement opportunities (Ferris et al., 1996). Further, exclusionary behaviors towards a team member impacts negatively on that person’s satisfaction with the team experience (Panipucci, 2003). It is critical, therefore, for organizations to take steps to ensure that ‘bad apples’ do not manipulate the human desire to become or remain a part of the in-group, for destructive purposes. An ethical and inclusive climate means that co-workers can be expected to provide both emotional and instrumental support to each other (Bacharach, Bamberger, & Vashdi, 2005). This, however, cannot occur if a ‘bad apple’ is manipulating peoples’ emotional levers to create destructive faultlines. Therefore, it is vitally important for organizations to seriously commit to monitoring the workgroup environment to ensure that negative subgroups do not survive, and if they are already in existence, they must make a fundamental change in the structures, formal and informal reward systems, leadership practices, competency requirements, and cultures of the organization. Moreover, organizations must hold people accountable for the constructive use of emotion management skills and value-based behavior.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT We thank Deshani Ganegoda for her helpful comments on a late version of this chapter.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS Nalini Ambady is a Professor at Tufts University’s Psychology Department, and conducts research on interpersonal judgment. Claire E. Ashton-James was a visiting scholar at Duke University and PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales when her chapter was written. Her research interests include affective influences on automatic social cognition and behavior, nonconscious mimicry, and affective forecasting. Heike Bruch is a Professor of Leadership at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and a Director at the Institute for Leadership and Human Resource Management. She is academic director of the University of St. Gallen’s International Study Program. She received her PhD in 1996 from the University of Hannover, Germany, and her habilitation in 2001 from the University of St. Gallen. Her research focuses on leadership both at the strategic and at the interpersonal level. She is particularly interested in leaders’ action, organizational energy, and the impacts of emotions in organizations and work teams. Hilary Anger Elfenbein is an Assistant Professor at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, and formerly a Senior Researcher at Harvard Business School and management consultant with Monitor Group. She holds a PhD in Organizational Behavior, M.A. in Statistics, and B.A.s in Physics and Sanskrit from Harvard University. Her primary research interest is emotion in the workplace, particularly colleagues’ judgments of each other’s emotional states – not for social purposes, but in order to be productive. Her work appears in the Academy of Management Annals, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Psychological Bulletin. Leslie J. Harrington is a researcher in the field of Color Strategy. Her work concentrates on understanding the emotional and cognitive facets of color in 311
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the contexts of products, brands, and built environments, and leveraging color’s impact to affect organizational performance and consumer behavior. Charmine E. J. Ha¨rtel is Professor of Organizational Behavior and Director of Research for the Department of Management at Monash University. Her current research activities focus on emotions and patterns of relating at work, development of emotional intelligence, diversity; leadership, and team effectiveness. Charmine has been recognized for her excellence in research, innovation in organizational practice, supervision, service, and mentoring, in particular with relation to students from diverse backgrounds, and is the recipient of several awards including the Martin E.P. Seligman Applied Research Award, the Janet Chusmir Service Award, the Monash University Vice Chancellors Award for Postgraduate Supervision Excellence, and the Deakin University Student Association Award for Supervisor of the Year in the Faculty of Business and Law. She has authored five books and over 50 refereed journal articles, which have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Management, Academy of Management Review, Applied Psychology: An International Review, Leadership Quarterly, and Journal of Applied Psychology. Ronit Kark is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) of Organizational Studies in the Departments of Psychology and Sociology at Bar-Ilan University. She received her PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her current research interests include leadership, mentoring relationships, identity and identification processes, emotions and gender in organizations. Dominique A. Keeffe is a PhD candidate at the School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Her research interests are in the areas of misbehavior, the employee–consumer interface, services marketing, and emotions. To date, Dominique’s research has won a Best Doctoral Paper award at the Fifth International Conference on Emotions and Organizational Life. Nell Kimberley is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Management at Monash University. She holds a Master of Business (Organization Behavior) and is currently undertaking a PhD in the area of justice, emotions, and organizational change. Nell leads subjects in the graduate and undergraduate management and HR programs. Her research interests include organizational behavior, leadership, and change management. She has also undertaken research in relation to student learning at Monash.
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Hana Medler-Liraz is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Bar-Ilan University. Her current research interests include leadership, emotions in organization, and customer service interactions. She teaches statistics and research methods. Ge´rard Na¨ring is Associate Professor at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. He has a background in clinical and health psychology and published about hypertension and rheumatoid arthritis. After he also started working at the department of Work and Health of the Open University in the Netherlands, he developed an interest in emotion regulation at work. His current research interests are emotional labor, dissociation and dissociative disorders. The regulation of emotions is a recurrent theme in his work. Debra Panipucci is a doctoral student at Deakin University and the People and Performance Coordinator at PKF Chartered Accountants. Her research interests include the ethical decision-making process and diversity in teams, with particular emphasis on the social influences on intrateam behavior and the trade-offs involved in the decision-making process. Jeffrey T. Polzer is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at Harvard Business School. His research explores how group affiliations affect people’s decisions, perceptions, and social interactions, especially in diverse work teams. He received his PhD in Organizational Behavior from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University in 1994. Anat Rafaeli is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management of the Technion – Israel’s Institute of Technology. She received her PhD from The Ohio State University and has also been on the faculty at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, The University of Michigan and Insead. Anat has conducted and published research on emotions and behavior in organizations and on the dynamics of service delivery, especially the interactions between service employees and their customers. She also studies the meaning and impact of various organizational symbols such as organizational dress, organizational advertising, and organizational physical layout. Before her academic career, Anat worked in managerial positions at the Wells-Fargo Bank in San Francisco and at the management development center of IBM at Armonk, NY.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Aviad E. Raz is Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the Department of Behavioral Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel, where he is also directing the Behavioral Sciences BA Program. He has published three books and many journal articles on the subject of organizational culture. His recent research projects include the social and bioethical aspects of genetic testing (The Gene and the Genie: Tradition, Medicalization and Genetic Counseling in a Bedouin Community in Israel, published in 2005 by Carolina Academic Press) as well as efficiency and service quality in call centres (forthcoming in New Technology, Work and Employment and in The Learning Organization). Rebekah Russell-Bennett is a Senior Lecturer with the School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. She holds a PhD in marketing. Rebekah’s research is usually within the services sector dealing with the employee–consumer interface, and as such draws on both organizational behavior and consumer behavior theories in her research. Rebekah’s current research areas are emotions and consumer complaints, and brand loyalty. She has published in international journals including Industrial Marketing Management, Cross-Cultural Management, Journal of Customer Behavior, Journal of Product and Brand Management, Journal of Brand Management, Journal of the Advancement of Marketing Education, Journal of Services Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Entrepreneurship, and Gender, Work & Organization. Alastair Tombs is a Lecturer in Marketing at the UQ Business School, University of Queensland, Australia. His research interests are in the areas of the service environment and its impact on consumer behavior as well as the effects of emotional contagion on customer to customer interactions. To date Alastair’s work has been published in Marketing Theory and received ‘‘best paper’’ awards at both Australasian and European marketing conferences. Veronique Tran is Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at ESCP-EAP (European School of Management), Paris, France. She received her PhD in psychology at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Her core research interests are emotion and team decision-making processes, emotional climate, and innovation and creativity as multilevel phenomena. Additional topics of interest are team dynamics, team performance, TMTs, and organizational learning, linked to the issue of sharing information. She has
About the Authors
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extensive teaching experience in the context of international management and executive education with emphasis on interpersonal and organizational behavior topics. Annemarie van Droffelaar studied psychology at the Open University of the Netherlands. She organized the data collection for this study and reported initial results in her Masters thesis. She is now working as a psychologist and consultant at Shared Ambition, Zeist, the Netherlands, a company that specializes in therapy and training for work-related complaints such as burnout. Tuija Virkki is a researcher at the University of Jyva¨skyla¨, Finland. In her recent studies, she has analyzed the gendered ways of anger management and the relationship between feelings of anger and agency. Currently, she is studying experience of workplace violence among Finnish social workers and nurses. She is especially interested in the emotional skills that are supposed to prevent client-perpetrated violence. In addition to the research, Virkki teaches courses on the topic of violence and emotion in Sociology at the University of Jyva¨skyla¨. Frank Walter is a doctoral candidate at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and a research associate at the University of St. Gallen’s Institute for Leadership and Human Resource Management. He studied in Konstanz, Germany, and San Francisco, CA, and received his diploma in public policy and management (Dipl. Verw.-wiss.) from the University of Konstanz in 2004. His research interests include the development of effective leadership behaviors, energy in organizations, and within-group processes and dynamics in work teams.
