SECTION II: CONTEXTUALIZATION DEVELOPMENTS IN STUDYING EMOTION IN ORGANIZATIONS
Section II comprises four chapters that exemplify contextualization developments to advance our understanding of the significant role emotion plays in organizational processes, further influencing the changing nature of studying emotions and worklife. In particular, these chapters provide insight into the interplay between causes of emotion affects and underlying phenomena that influence outcomes in organizational behavior and context.
The first chapter of Section II (Chapter 7), by Olof Brunninge and Anders Melander, presents a processual study aimed at understanding the longevity of family firms by focusing on the management of resources from the perspective of financial and socioemotional wealth rationalities. The novel perspective in this chapter pertains to the processual methodology used and the use of a socioemotional wealth perspective (SEW), which takes the view that family firms do not only try to maximize their financial wealth, but also their socioemotional wealth. Both perspectives have much to offer the study of all forms of organizations from an emotions lens.
In Chapter 8, Magdalena Markowska, Charmine E. J. Hartel, Ethel Brundin, Amanda Roan introduce us to emotions in the entrepreneurial setting. They conceptually build a model to illustrate how emotions play a role for the crafting of the entrepreneurial identity. The authors suggest that emotions play a significant role in this process where the interplay between the context and the enactment of the role of being an entrepreneur takes place. The model suggests that the drivers behind an individual’s decision to become an entrepreneur and the affective responses and their significant emotional experiences during the process of developing their entrepreneurial role progresses toward an enactment or a “dis-enactment” cycle of the entrepreneurial identity. Thus, emotions can be the decisive impetus that makes or breaks the entrepreneurial identity process.
Work design, defined as “the content and organization of one’s work tasks, activities, relationships, and responsibilities” (Parker, 2014, p. 662), has largely overlooked the complex cognitive-emotional interaction in understanding employee motivation and satisfaction. In Chapter 9, Sandra Kiffin-Petersen reviews what we know about this interaction from research on emotions and recent studies in neuroscience together with traditional and emergent work design perspectives. Examining emotions and work design is temporally relevant because of accumulating evidence supporting the stress buffering effects of positive emotions and the ubiquitous presence of emotional and interpersonal tasks in service jobs. The chapter introduces the Self-Referential Emotional Regulatory Model (SERM) of work design and concludes with the suggestion that a focal point of new research into emotions in organizations should be on studying how to combine tasks, activities, and relationships so as to promote positive affective states and minimize the impact of negative emotions on employees’ well-being.
Emotional Intelligence (EI) has been a central topic in the emotions in organizations literature since its rapid growth beginning 30 years ago. As Jim A. McCleskey points out in Chapter 10, EI research and theorizing have been limited by a plurality of conceptual definitions and measurement methods. For example, EI has been conceptualized as an ability, a competency, or a trait and some theories of EI mix these conceptualizations. Moreover, methods of assessing EI have also differed and have included self-report and ability measures. McCleskey advocates for use of performance based or “Stream One Ability Model” (SOAM) measures of EI, such as the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT v2.0; Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2002). The MSCEIT has been criticized, however, for weak construct validity. McCleskey therefore argues for expanded use of situational judgment tests (SJTs) in studying EI within SOAM. Chapter 10 reviews alternate SJTs and concludes with recommendations for the future of SOAM EI research, in particular a revision of the MSCEIT.
