Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management

M. Ronald Buckley, Anthony R. Wheeler, Jonathon R. B. Halbesleben, M. Ronald Buckley, Anthony R. Wheeler, Jonathon R. B. Halbesleben

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781787147096
• eBook ISBN: 9781787430129
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Volume 35 of Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management will contain six chapters on salient issues in the field of human resources management, thus continuing the tradition of the series to develop a more informed understanding of the field. The subject matter in this volume covers employment barriers, mentoring relationships, authentic leadership, emotion regulation and workplace deviance and performance management.

EMOTIONS AND EMOTIONAL REGULATION IN HRM: A MULTI-LEVEL PERSPECTIVE

Neal M. Ashkanasy, Ashlea C. Troth, Sandra A. Lawrence and Peter J. Jordan

ABSTRACT

Scholars and practitioners in the OB literature nowadays appreciate that emotions and emotional regulation constitute an inseparable part of work life, but the HRM literature has lagged in addressing the emotional dimensions of life at work. In this chapter therefore, beginning with a multi-level perspective taken from the OB literature, we introduce the roles played by emotions and emotional regulation in the workplace and discuss their implications for HRM. We do so by considering five levels of analysis: (1) within-person temporal variations, (2) between persons (individual differences), (3) interpersonal processes; (4) groups and teams, and (5) the organization as a whole. We focus especially on processes of emotional regulation in both self and others, including discussion of emotional labor and emotional intelligence. In the opening sections of the chapter, we discuss the nature of emotions and emotional regulation from an OB perspective by introducing the five-level model, and explaining in particular how emotions and emotional regulation play a role at each of the levels. We then apply these ideas to four major domains of concern to HR managers: (1) recruitment, selection, and socialization; (2) performance management; (3) training and development; and (4) compensation and benefits. In concluding, we stress the interconnectedness of emotions and emotional regulation across the five levels of the model, arguing that emotions and emotional regulation at each level can influence effects at other levels, ultimately culminating in the organization’s affective climate.

Keywords: Emotions; emotional regulation; five-level model

Emotion can be the enemy, if you give in to your emotion, you lose yourself. You must be at one with your emotion, because the body always follows the mind.

– Bruce Lee

The word “emotion” derives from the Latin word emovere, which means simply “to move.” As such, emotions represent an organization’s basic biological responses to environmental stimuli. In this regard, Frijda (1986) defined emotion in terms of psychological changes that an organism undergoes in readiness for action in response to stimuli. Schwarz and Clore (1983) note further that emotions represent in essence an organism’s means to signal readiness for action. In addition, emotions can be either positive or negative, with positive emotion usually signaling a safe situation and maintenance of a status quo, while negative emotions signal that something is awry and the organism needs to take action to resolve the situation.

The problem with emotions, however, is that they emanate from basic psychophysiological processes deep in the limbic brain, and therefore are not fully under conscious control. This realization led Descartes (1641/1978) to found the philosophy of “dualism”; which holds that the mind and body act independently. More recently, however, we learned from the work of Damasio (1994) that this is not in fact so. In his book Descartes’ Error, Damasio refers to the case of “Patient Elliot,” who suffered from a brain lesion that prevented him from experiencing emotion. Despite his high IQ, however, Patient Elliot was unable to make even the simplest of decisions. Damasio coined the expression “somatic marker” to represent the essential connection between mind and body. More recently, researchers have established the veracity of this connection, showing that the limbic and cortical brain systems work together across multiple pathways (see Ashkanasy, 2003, for a more detailed discussion about the neurophysiology of emotion).

The point here is that attempting to study human behavior and thought without considering the emotional side, including the need for individuals to control (i.e., to regulate) their emotions, is futile. In fact, and as Weiss and Brief (2001) point out, organizational behavior (OB) and HRM scholars in the early years of the Twentieth Century appeared to be aware of this. For example, Durkheim (1912/1976) coined the idea of “collective consciousness” (or common values), which was largely predicated in the idea that rational explanations of behavior tell only a part of the story. This view also underpinned much of the OB and HRM research in the 1920s and 1930s as scholars began to apply principles borrowed from the natural sciences to develop the principles of the “scientific method” of studying human behavior. Thus, and as Weiss and Brief also detail, the study of the role played by emotions and emotional regulation in behavior was considered essential in this early work, especially when considering dependent variables such as job satisfaction and work–life balance.

Following the Second World War, however, the role of emotions came to be considered secondary to the more “rational” concepts of traditional economics, as social scientists turned their attention to matters of industrial effectiveness and efficiency. This trend continued until Simon (1976) proposed the idea of “bounded rationality” (although Simon still tended to dismiss the emotions as either “irrational” or “arational”) which identifies the limits of human capacity in deciding between alternatives.

A further decade elapsed following Simon’s (1976) seminal work before social scientists began to grasp in full the importance of emotions and the need for emotional regulation. A major impetus for this realization came via a study by sociologist Hochschild (1983), showing how employees working in jobs that involve interactions with the public (e.g., sales, customer service, flight attendants, debt collectors) need to assume organizationally mandated emotional expressions, which were often different from the emotions they were actually feeling at the time. Hochschild called this “emotional labor,” pointing out that this kind of behavior, while deemed critical to meet key performance goals, also placed a heavy emotional strain on the employees so engaged, often resulting in burnout and/or productivity loss. Rafaeli and Sutton (1987, 1989) subsequently introduced the idea of emotional labor to the mainstream of OB literature. At the core of emotional labor is the more fundamental idea of emotional regulation (which we discuss in more detail later in this chapter).

The next breakthrough in terms of bringing the study of emotions into the mainstream literature, however, was an article by Ashforth and Humphrey (1995), where the authors argued convincingly that emotions lie deeply embedded in every aspect of organizational life. Ashforth and Humphrey pointed to evidence that organizational members’ emotions and emotional reactions to everyday events had implications for a wide range of individual behaviors, including motivation and leadership, as well as affecting behavior in groups. The authors called in particular for research into the role of emotional expression and regulation, and asked why scholars, especially in the decision-making literature, seemed to have forgotten all about the emotional dimension. In this regard, they asked why emotions had apparently become a “dysfunctional antithesis of reality” (p. 120).

Weiss and Cropanzano (1996) added further impetus to recognition of the role emotions play in organizational life and developed the idea that emotions in organizations are associated with what they referred to as “affective events.” In their model, such events arise in the environment and trigger emotional reactions that, in turn, result in direct behavioral responses (“affect-driven behavior”) and development of attitudes (such as job satisfaction and/or commitment), which then lead to more considered “judgment-driven behaviors.” Known as Affective Events Theory (AET), Ashton-James and Ashkanasy (2005) subsequently extended the idea to encompass a strategic perspective.

In 2003, twenty years after the publication of The Managed Heart (Hochschild, 1983), Barsade, Brief, and Spataro (2003) announced that an “affective revolution in organizational behavior” (p. 3) had occurred. This was on top of the “cognitive revolution” that had taken place a decade earlier (Major & Tower, 1994). Today, continuing interest in the role of emotions and emotional regulation in organizations is manifest in the Listserv Emonet, an international online network for discussion of topics in this field. This group conducts a biannual conference series (The International Conference on Emotions and Worklife, http://www.emotionsnet.org). Associated with these activities, is an annual book series (Research on Emotion in Organizations, http://emeraldinsight.com/series/reom). For recent reviews of the field, see Ashkanasy and Humphrey (2011b) and Ashkanasy and Dorris (2017).

While the important role of emotions is now well-acknowledged in the OB literature, it would seem however that HRM scholars have yet to appreciate fully the critical role that emotions play in their field of study. This is despite repeated calls for HRM scholars to embrace this as a central topic (e.g., see Ashkanasy & Ashton-James, 2005; Fox & Spector, 2002; Pekrun & Frese, 1992). Moreover, while well-known HRM approaches such as AMO (Ability, Motivation, Opportunity) theory – which predicts that employee job performance is determined by a combination of employees’ abilities, motivation and opportunity to perform – seem to imply an emotional dimension (Boxall & Purcell, 2011; Paauwe 2009), HRM scholars have yet to devise a comprehensive theory about the role of emotions and emotional regulation. Thus, we find that authors in the HRM field seem to refer only rather sporadically to emotion-related constructs (e.g., Brunetto, Teo, Shacklock, & Farr-Wharton, 2012). In particular, emotions is almost totally absent from the strategic HRM literature (e.g., see Huselid, 1995), despite calls for the topic to be addressed (e.g., see Doorewaard & Benschop, 2003). To address this shortcoming we turn to Ashkanasy’s (2003) five-level model of emotions in the workplace, and examine its potential as a framework for understanding the role of emotions and emotional regulation in HRM.

THE FIVE-LEVEL MODEL

As foreshadowed, we refer to the five-level model of emotions in organizations proposed by Ashkanasy (2003) to structure the present review. The model begins at Level 1, which refers to “within-person” temporal variability in affect and behavior. At Level 2, attention turns to “between-person” variability, which refers to more stable individual dispositions, including personality, trait affectivity, and emotional intelligence. The role of emotions in interpersonal relationships is the focus at Level 3 of the model. This level encompasses interpersonal perceptions and communication of emotion, and includes emotional labor. Group-level analysis becomes the focus at Level 4 of the model, including leadership, which is viewed as a team-level property. Finally, Level 5 is an overarching level in the model encompassing organization-wide phenomena, including affective culture and climate.

LEVEL 1: WITHIN-PERSON

As Weiss and Cropanzano (1996) emphasize in AET, an employee’s experience at work is far from static. On the contrary, employees experience moment-by-moment and day-by-day variations in every aspect of their behavior, thoughts (cognitions), and feelings (affect). Indeed, there is a burgeoning stream of research that encourages the examination of within-person variation of emotion in the workplace (Fisher & To, 2012; Jordan & Lindebaum, 2015). From an HRM perspective, understanding within-person variation in emotion at work is important for managing the day-to-day behaviors of individual employees. Emotions experienced on a within-person basis in a single day can be diverse, varying from happy and excited, to surprised, to sad, and to angry and fearful. Given the complexity of examining emotions in the workplace, we focus in the next discussion on just one of the most common emotions that employees experience: fear (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2013). Following this discussion, we address the process of emotional regulation as a means to manage emotions in worklife.

Fear: The Survival Emotion

Fear is ubiquitous in every aspect of biological life. Without fear, organizations would not be able to take the necessary action to survive. In this regard, LeDoux (1995a) pointed out that the study of fear provides a unique insight into the functioning of the human emotional brain (see Armony & LeDoux, 2000; LeDoux, 1995a, 1995b, 1996, 1998, 2000). LeDoux (1995a) makes the point that, because fear is the basic mechanism of self-preservation for every species, it is the key to evolutionary survival. Moreover, fear is an emotion that responds to both internal and external stimuli. Thus, an organism’s perception of a threat emanating in the environment is li...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Emotions and Emotional Regulation in HRM: A Multi-Level Perspective
• The Development of Mentoring Relationships: An Attachment Theory Perspective
• Authentic Leadership and High-Performance Human Resource Practices: Implications for Work Engagement
• Performance Management: A Marriage between Practice and Science – Just Say “I do”
• The Case for Adopting Blockmodeling in Human Resource Management Research: Examples in Analyzing Social Networks and HRM Systems
• Barriers to Employment: Individual and Organizational Perspectives
• Systemic Awareness Modeling: A Synthesis of Strategic HR Decision-Making Practices
• About the Authors
• Index