Jennifer M. George

Emotions and Leadership: The Role of Emotional Intelligence

This paper suggests that feelings (moods and emotions) play a central role in the leadership process. More specifically, it is proposed that emotional intelligence, the ability to understand and manage moods and emotions in the self and others, contributes to effective leadership in organizations. Four major aspects of emotional intelligence, the appraisal and expression of emotion, the use of emotion to enhance cognitive processes and decision making, knowledge about emotions, and management of emotions, are described. Then, I propose how emotional intelligence contributes to effective leadership by focusing on five essential elements of leader effectiveness: development of collective goals and objectives; instilling in others an appreciation of the importance of work activities; generating and maintaining enthusiasm, confidence, optimism, cooperation, and trust; encouraging flexibility in decision making and change; and establishing and maintaining a meaningful identity for an organization.

Feeling good-doing good: A conceptual analysis of the mood at work-organizational spontaneity relationship.

Five forms of organizational spontaneity are described (helping co-workers, protecting the organization, making constructive suggestions, developing oneself, and spreading goodwill). Organizational spontaneity is compared with the seemingly analogous constructs of organizational citizenship behavior and prosocial organizational behavior. Based on a selective review of the literature, a multilevel model of spontaneity is presented. Positive mood at work is a pivotal construct in the model and posited as the direct precursor of organizational spontaneity. Primary work-group characteristics, the affective tone of the primary work group, affective disposition, life event history, and contextual characteristics are proposed to have direct or indirect effects, or both, on positive mood at work. Motivational bases of organizational spontaneity also are described. The model and its implications are discussed.

When Job Dissatisfaction Leads to Creativity: Encouraging the Expression of Voice

This study focused on the conditions under which job dissatisfaction will lead to creativity as an expression of voice. We theorized that useful feedback from coworkers, coworker helping and support, and perceived organizational support for creativity would each interact with job dissatisfaction and continuance commitment (commitment motivated by necessity) to result in creativity. In a sample of 149 employees, as hypothesized, employees with high job dissatisfaction exhibited the highest creativity when continuance commitment was high and when (1) useful feedback from coworkers, or (2) coworker helping and support, or (3) perceived organizational support for creativity was high.

When openness to experience and conscientiousness are related to creative behavior : An interactional approach

This study adopted an interactional approach to understanding how 2 of the Five-Factor traits, openness to experience and conscientiousness, are related to creative behavior in the workplace. Openness to experience is theorized to result in high levels of creative behavior and conscientiousness is theorized to result in low levels of creative behavior when the situation allows for the manifestation of the trait influences. More specifically, the authors hypothesized that openness to experience would result in high levels of creative behavior if feedback valence were positive and job holders were presented with a heuristic task that allowed them to be creative. The authors also hypothesized that conscientiousness would result in low levels of creative behavior if supervisors engaged in close monitoring and coworkers were unsupportive. The authors tested their hypotheses in a sample of office workers, and 5 out of the 6 hypotheses were supported.

State or trait: Effects of positive mood on prosocial behaviors at work.

Positive mood at work (as an affective state) was hypothesized to be significantly and positively associated with the performance of both extrarole and role-prescribed prosocial organizational behaviors. Moreover, positive mood was hypothesized to have effects on prosocial behavior above and beyond the effects of fairness cognitions. Conversely, positive mood as a trait (\£., positive affectivity) was expected to be unrelated to either form of prosocial behavior. Finally, the form of role-prescribed prosocial behavior investigated, customer-service behavior or helpful behavior directed at customers, was hypothesized to be positively associated with sales performance. These hypotheses were tested with a sample of 221 salespeople. All of the hypotheses were supported. Implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed.

Understanding when bad moods foster creativity and good ones don't: the role of context and clarity of feelings.

Using a mood-as-input model, the authors identified conditions under which negative moods are positively related, and positive moods are negatively related, to creative performance. Among a sample of workers in an organizational unit charged with developing creative designs and manufacturing techniques, the authors hypothesized and found that negative moods were positively related to creative performance when perceived recognition and rewards for creative performance and clarity of feelings (a metamood process) were high. The authors also hypothesized and found that positive moods were negatively related to creative performance when perceived recognition and rewards for creativity and clarity of feelings were high.

The Role of Time in Theory and Theory Building

Although time has been included in theory and theory building as a boundary condition, this paper argues that time can and should play a more important role because it can change the ontological description and meaning of a theoretical construct and of the relationships between constructs. We suggest that theorists explicitly incorporate multiple aspects of temporality into the “what, how, and why” building blocks of their theories. First, we describe six important time dimensions that we propose are especially relevant to theory building about people, groups, and organizations: the past, future, and present and the subjective experience of time; time aggregations; duration of steady states and rates of change; incremental versus discontinuous change; frequency, rhythms, and cycles; and spirals and intensity. Second, we put forward a series of time-related questions that can serve as a guide or template for improving theory building through the incorporation of temporality into the what, how, and why of t...

The Role of Personality in Organizational Life: Issues and Evidence

This article is a selective review of important issues, themes, and topics regarding the effects of personality on organizational behavior. Recent literature on the impact of personality on job attitudes and affective states at work is reviewed. Two traits, positive affectivity and negative affectivity, are presented as the key dispositional determinants of affective reactions at work. Criticisms of the dispositional approach are addressed and the integrative perspective of interactional psychology is discussed. The distinction between traits and states is explained and it is shown how states mediate the effects of traits on behavior with states essentially capturing the person-situation interaction. Theorizing and research on person-environment fit, a complementary perspective on person-situation interactions, is discussed, followed by a discussion of the links between personality and three organizationallyrelevant outcomes: prosocial behavior, effort and performance, and leadership. Finally, the links between two personality traits, negative affectivity and the Type A behavior pattern, and work-related distress are elucidated.

Integrating bottom-up and top-down theories of subjective well-being: The case of health.

As a means of integrating bottom-up and top-down theories of subjective well-being (SWB), a framework was proposed that, in part, posits that both objective life circumstances and global personality dimensions indirectly affect SWB through their effects on the interpretation of life circumstances. This proposition was tested both cross-sectionally and longitudinally among a sample of approximately 375 men and women. Personality was operationalized in terms of the dispositional trait negative affectivity (NA), and the life circumstance investigated was health. Strong support was obtained for the hypothesized indirect effects of NA and objective health on SWB. Implications of the integrative framework for the study of SWB are discussed.

Towards a Process Model of Individual Change in Organizations

This article analyses the way the individual change process unfolds when major; second-order changes are required. Using a framework that integrates both the cognitive and affective components of individual sensemaking and interpretation, we develop a process model that systematically analyses the psychology of the individual change process, and, in particular, the sources of resistance to change or inertia. A series of steps in the change process are identified if second-order change is to come about, and a series of testable propositions about the forces that may facilitate or stymie change are developed.