Emotion Essay ⋆ Business Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Emotion has various definitions. Some characteristics of emotions that are generally accepted are that they involve thought, appraisal, and judgments, a physical reaction, and an experience that is intentional. These characteristics indicate that emotions are both physical and cognitive. They help create meaning and action, and they are intrinsic to social order, conflict, politics, influence, etc. Emotions are affected by intellect, language, culture, and experience.

Emotions, with the exception of stress and satisfaction, were missing from the organizational context as they were perceived as incompatible with reason or rationality and were therefore viewed as a human limitation, something that needed to be controlled or eradicated. Organizations were understood as rational entities that aimed to eliminate irrational behavior of people as it was likely to interfere with the accomplishment of their goals, and emotions were perceived as synonymous with irrationality. Interest in emotion in business and emotional work has increased since the 1970s as the realization that emotion cannot be excluded from human interaction increased and the shift away from the pure rationalist perspective of organizations took place. More recently, emotions are perceived as not only compatible with reason but as something that can complement reason or even as something necessary for reasoning and decision making.

In organizational studies, affect is sometimes used as the umbrella term that contains emotions and moods. Emotions are of increased interest in organizations because they affect work motivation and job satisfaction. In the organizational literature, an emphasis on positive emotions such as happiness, love, joy, and enthusiasm is identified because they enable individuals to feel good and have positive consequences by creating a harmonious, strong, fair organization. In contrast, negative emotions like anxiety, fear, and hate are seen as destructive and disruptive, and therefore, based on the assumption that they can be separated from positive emotions, the prescriptions relating to them focus on their elimination. This view is questioned, however, since positive and negative emotions cannot be separated, as they inform and develop each other.

Mapping the journey of emotions in the organizational arena, first a reluctance to allow emotions in organizations developed, followed by a more recent reluctance to accept negative emotions. Other views see selected emotions as inherently part of organizations as long as they relate to aggression, confidence, and competition, which define organizational life, while other emotions that relate to weakness, submission, and caring are inherently not organizational.

In the organizational context, the effect of emotion in relation to performance, decision making, turnover, prosocial behavior, negotiation, group dynamics, and leadership has been researched with evidence that suggests that positive emotions improve performance at the individual, group, and organizational levels. Some negative emotions have been found to have positive consequences in relation to concerns about fairness, power, and negotiation. Further, current research in emotions suggests that they are not necessarily only attributed to individuals but they are also attributed to organizations.

The interest in emotions in organizations increased with the development of emotional intelligence (EI) and emotional labor. EI is the ability to monitor and control one’s own and others’ emotions and to be able to use them effectively in one’s thinking and action. Emotions are used and controlled to improve intelligence. EI is perceived as a competency and capability that enables people in organizations and in particular leaders to achieve outstanding levels of performance. Debates about EI, despite its popularity, concern its nature and measurement. Some argue that EI is based on abilities that help people understand and use emotional information while others argue that EI is a set of characteristics that can be applied in interpersonal settings.

Emotional regulation and emotional labor relate to how employees exhibit their emotions at work. Emotional regulation provides the link between feeling and consciousness and it is argued that all emotion is regulated, thus understanding emotion regulation as relative is more appropriate than regulated or unregulated emotion. When, however, this regulation is imposed by the organization this difficulty disappears, as the employee has to comply with emotion display rules that result in emotional labor. Emotional labor is the commercialization of emotions for organizational ends. It includes the management of emotions at work, as well as the organizational controls on emotional displays through roles, tasks, social interaction, and culture. It is labor because employees have to regulate their emotions so that they can produce appropriate emotional states in others.

Bibliography:

Neal M. Ashkanasy and Cary L. Cooper, Research Companion to Emotion in Organizations (Edward Elgar, 2008);
G. Barsade and D. E. Gibson, “Why Does Affect Matter in Organizations?” Academy of Management Perspectives (2007);
Alan D. Boss and Henry P. Sims, Jr., “Everyone Fails! Using Emotion Regulation and SelfLeadership for Recovery,” Journal of Managerial Psychology (v.32/2, 2008);
B. Briner, “The Neglect and Importance of Emotion at Work,” European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology (1999);
“Failing Happily: How Emotions and Self-Leadership Can Lead You Back To Success,” Development and Learning in Organizations (v.22/6, 2008);
Fineman, ed., Emotion in Organizations (Sage, 2000);
Fineman, “Getting the Measure of Emotion—and the Cautionary Tale of Emotional Intelligence,” Human Relations (2004);
Goleman, Emotional Intelligence (Bantam Books, 2006);
J. Gross, “Emotion Regulation: Past, Present, Future,” Cognition and Emotion (1999);
Harre and W. G. Parrott, eds., The Emotions: Social, Cultural and Biological Dimensions (Sage, 1996);
Rafaeli and M. Worline, “Individual Emotion in Work Organizations,” Social Science Information (2001);
Eugénie Angèle Samier, and Michèle Schmidt, Emotional Dimensions of Educational and Administrative Leadership (Routledge, 2009);
Amy Carson Sauers, Effective Customer Relationship Management: How Emotion Drives Sustainable Success (Cambria Press, 2008).

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