Emotions in the Workplace: Research, Theory, and Practice

Spanning a variety of disciplines, theories, and methods, the editors and the contributors to this uniquely cross- and interdisciplinary volume explore the factors that provoke emotions in the workplace, their effects, and how they should be managed. Among the propositions they examine are: emotions are not just effects in organizations but contribute to their structure; by examining emotions we learn more about certain organizational dynamics that may seem unemotional; the display of emotions may not be harmful; and leadership is actually about emotion management. An important, far-reaching exploration for specialists and academics in organizational behavior, psychology, and other fields in the social and behavioral sciences and for their executive counterparts in management.

The editors and their contributors start from the premise that organizations are emotional places, that they use emotions to motivate employees to perform and customers to buy. Using quantitative as well as qualitative methods, and theoretical as well as methodological approaches, they show how events in organizations create emotions—how it is that we come to experience a sense of satisfaction or outrage. They explore how our sense of organizational identity is connected to how we feel; how rules about the display of emotions act as organizing forces within organizations, creating organizational structure and shaping behavior; how emotions can harm employees, how they react to pressures to feel, and how emotions are essential to inspirational leadership. Not just for theoreticians and academicians, the volume is also a rich source of advice for organizational management and for those who wish to influence how management is practiced.