Tina Kiefer

Understanding the Emotional Experience of Organizational Change: Evidence from a Merger

The problem and the solution. Organizational changes, especially mergers,are very emotive events.Still,in change models, the role of emotion is rarely discussed. Most of the change literature focuses on rational and cognitive aspects and views emotions merely as human frailty or cause for interference with implementing change.This literature portrays a very limited and superficial understanding of emotions. By drawing on psychological literature on emotion theories,more helpful notions can be developed, such as viewing emotions as an essential part of the working experience. These theoretical developments are exemplified and taken a step further by the results of an explorative study, investigating the emotional experiences of a merger.A framework is developed,which allows researchers to map out the emotional experience more comprehensively.

Approach or Avoid? Exploring Overall Justice and the Differential Effects of Positive and Negative Emotions

As empirical research exploring the relationship between justice and emotion has accumulated, there have been key questions that have remained unanswered and theoretical inconsistencies that have emerged. In this article, the authors address several of these gaps, including whether overall justice relates to both positive and negative emotions and whether both sets of emotions mediate the relationship between overall justice and behavioral outcomes. They also reconcile theoretical inconsistencies related to the differential effects of positive and negative emotions on behavioral outcomes (i.e., performance, withdrawal, and helping). Across two field studies (Study 1 is a cross-sectional study with multirater data, N = 136; Study 2 is a longitudinal study, N = 451), positive emotions consistently mediated the relationship between overall justice and approach-related behaviors (i.e., performance and helping), whereas negative emotions consistently mediated the relationship between overall justice and avoidance-related behaviors (i.e., withdrawal). Mixed results were found for negative emotions and approach-related behaviors (i.e., performance and helping), which indicated the importance of considering context, time, and target of the behavior. The authors discuss the theoretical implications for the asymmetric and broaden-and-build theories of emotion as well as the importance of simultaneously examining both positive and negative emotions.

New ways to leadership development: A picture paints a thousand words:

Mainstream leadership development often focuses only on leaders themselves and existing models that purport to help these individuals become better at leading. However, this sort of leader development (as opposed to leadership development) is questionable with regard to efficiency and effectiveness. We argue here that this may be due to a lack of acknowledgement of leaders’ (and followers’) implicit leadership theories (Eden and Leviatan, 1975) in the context of leader and leadership development. In an attempt to broaden the scope of leadership development, we present the results of using a drawing exercise as a learning tool. This exercise serves to assess leaders’ (and followers’) implicitly held images of leaders and allows for contextual information derived from the exercise to be included in development interventions. Results show that participants draw metaphors and symbols as well as real and generic people. Furthermore, most drawings are of male leaders, and only few drawings contain followers. Based on the results, we critically reflect upon implications for leadership learning and development and argue that implicit leadership theories can provide a valuable starting point for leadership development.

Psychological research into the experience of emotion at work: definitely older, but are we any wiser?

A critical evaluation of the organizational psychology research on the experience of emotion at work was undertaken by examining the extent to which research has characteristics appropriate to basic psychological approaches to emotion. Five characteristics were identified covering definitions, use of theory, design, and methods. A range of edited books and peer-reviewed journals were searched to identify relevant research, which was then examined for the expected characteristics. The results revealed relatively few empirical studies about experience of emotion at work and, in most cases, the expected characteristics were found in only around half of the studies. The implications of this for future research are discussed.

Whither psychological research into emotion at work? Feeling for the future

The aim of this paper is to consider some of the desirable and likely future directions of organisational psychology research into emotion at work. We do so by identifying and discussing some current limitations of the field. Along with other observers we argue that although the field has grown quickly this expansion has not always led to an increased understanding of emotion at work. There are numerous reasons for this but we focus on four limitations of existing research: 1) poor quantification; 2) exaggerated claims about the importance of emotion and Emotional Intelligence (EI); 3) methods that are incongruent with psychological theory about emotion; 4) research too focused on commercial and managerial needs. The actions required to deal with these limitations are mostly self-evident, though apparently not easy to accomplish.

In the aftermath of unfair events : understanding the differential effects of anxiety and anger

After decades of domination by social exchange theory and its focus on a manager-centered perspective, fairness scholars have recently issued numerous calls to shift attention toward understanding employees’ subjective “lived-through” experiences and in situ responses to unfair events. Using appraisal theories, we argue that focusing on the employee’s perspective highlights the importance of emotions in fairness experiences. Further, this emphasis creates opportunities for novel insights regarding the emotions that are likely to be relevant, the constructive responses that can emerge from unfairness, and the interplay between unfair events and entity fairness judgments. Using a daily diary study with event sampling, we highlight the importance of anger and anxiety in understanding how individuals experience and react to unfair events. Results indicated that anger elicited counterproductive work behaviors, whereas anxiety initiated problem prevention behaviors (i.e., a subdimension of proactive work behavior). Further, by engaging in problem prevention behaviors, employees can positively influence their subsequent overall fairness judgments. Experiences of an unfair event can also be shaped by individuals’ preexisting overall fairness judgments, such that preexisting overall fairness judgments are negatively associated with anger but positively associated with anxiety. Implications for theory and practice are discussed, including the influential role of emotions for fairness experiences, how employees’ own behaviors can influence subsequent overall fairness judgments, the interplay between unfair events and entity judgments, and ensuring that fairness is effectively managed on a daily basis.