Stephen Fineman

Emotion in organizations

Emotional Arenas Revisited - Stephen Fineman PART ONE: EMOTIONAL TEXTURES Narratives of Compassion in Organizations - Peter J Frost et al Feelings at Work - Lloyd E Sandelands and Connie J Boudens Relational Experiences and Emotion at Work - Vincent R Waldron Emotion Metaphors in Management - Kathleen J Krone and Jayne M Morgan The Chinese Experience PART TWO: APPROPRIATING AND ORGANIZING EMOTION Commodifying the Emotionally Intelligent - Stephen Fineman Bounded Emotionally in the Body Shop - Joanne Martin and Kathy Knopoff and Christine Beckman Aesthetic Symbols as Emotional Clues - Varda Wasserman, Anat Rafaeli and Avi Kluger PART THREE: WORKING WITH EMOTION If Emotions Were Honoured - Debra E Meyerson A Cultural Analysis Emotional Labour and Authenticity - Blake E Ashforth and Marc A Tomiuk Views from Service Agents Ambivalent Feelings in Organizational Relationships - Michael G Pratt and Lorna Doucet A Detectives Lot - Robert Jackall Contours of Morality and Emotion in Police Work How Children Manage Emotion at School - Gillian Bendelow and Berry Mayall Emotions and Injustice in the Workplace - Karen P Harlos and Craig C Pinder PART FIVE: EPILOGUE Concluding Reflections - Stephen Fineman

Getting the Measure of Emotion - and the Cautionary Tale of Emotional Intelligence

This article examines critically the recent growth of emotion measurement in organizational behaviour. The epistemological and phenomenological consequences of psychometrically ‘boxing’ emotion are, it is argued, problematic and restrictive. This may be seen in the power and professional prestige it affords to the measurers and in the consequences to those classified by measurement. This is particularly so when an emotion is presented as key to personal or organizational success. Emotional intelligence is a strong illustration of these issues, where ‘experts’ ascribe positive value to people with high emotional intelligence quotients (EQ), and low EQs are regarded as suitable cases for training. How can emotion be ‘known’, other than through measurement and numbers? The article suggests some different approaches towards researching an important, but enigmatic, concept.

The Emotions of Control: A Qualitative Exploration of Environmental Regulation:

Processes of control remain central to managerial and critical theories of organization, but their inherently emotional form has been largely neglected. The experience and expression of emotions are more than simply objects and outcomes of control, they also shape its context, processes, and consequences. Drawing upon observations of interpersonal encounters between environmental regulatory inspectors and industrial managers in the U.K., an emotional framing of the dynamics of control is developed. This presents emotion as a condition and consequence of interacting socioeconomic roles and power structures such as those associated with occupations, gender, and capitalism. It also provides a way of analyzing control that is sensitive to its emotional characteristics and may be applied to other, more conventional control contexts.

Appreciating emotion at work: paradigm tensions

This article sets out some of the tensions, dilemmas and possibilities for emotion research in organisations. It reviews different traditions that have informed emotion explorations, in particular the kinds of questions inspired by essentialist approaches – wedded to measurement and numbers – and interpretivist approaches, employing narrative means of knowing. Two recent developments – emotional intelligence and positive organisational psychology – illustrate some of the strengths and weaknesses of the different paradigms, as well as the pitfalls of overenthusiastic applications. The article concludes by making a case for the superiority of interpretive approaches in representing both the qualitative texture of emotion and its political contextualisation.

A Psychosocial Model of Stress and Its Application to Managerial Unemployment

This paper describes a model of psychosocial stress attempting to explain the psychological response state of stress and physical disease (strain) related to stress, from the consequences of an individuals failure to master self-threatening problems. The model is phenomenological, focusing on an individuals perceived organizational and nonorganizational demands, and how these are modified by personality factors. Behavioral approaches for dealing with threat, and the effectiveness of such approaches, are discussed. The model is used as a framework to analyze qualitative and quantitative data derived from a study of unemployed managers. The themes which characterize the highand the low-stress managers are delineated, and the overall implications of the findings are discussed, with particular focus on the management of stress in organizations.

Accentuating the Positive

In my critique of positiveness I raised a number of key concerns about the conceptualization and development of the positive perspective in organizational behavior and organizational studies. Roberts addresses some of my worries, but still leaves open some importance questions, in particular the ontological assumptions that underpin positiveness and the scope for embracing critical theory.

Counselling the Unemployed - Help and Helplessness

Abstract The role of the counsellor is discussed with special reference to the reactions to job loss amongst a group of 100 white-collar unemployed. The importance of fitting counselling style to the phase of unemployment, and individual differences, is emphasised. Emotional and practical support by the counsellor is important, but it can be considerably enhanced by harnessing family and community resources. Ultimately, unemployment needs to be seen in its social context, and not just as an individuals own problem.

Change in Organizations

We are told that the pace of life in the late twentieth century is speeding up, if not hurtling along. In 1970 Alvin Toffler warned of ‘future shock’, where the super-mobile employee had to keep running faster in order to survive. Now rapid technological change has created organizations which do not require many people at all, let alone ones who run fast. Production and services are achieved by button pushers, seated at flickering computer terminals and fax machines. Electronic and mechnical slaves do much of the work. We seem unsure as to where all this will lead. Some are apocalyptic in their predictions: we are on an inexorable route to a deskilled life, void of job satisfaction. Others see light at the end of the tunnel: ingenious information technologies will provide the opportunity for exciting new ways of collaboration.