Emotions

Since the late nineteen century and the rise of scientific management, organizations have been specifically designed with the objective of trying to control emotions. A well-run organization was one that successfully eliminated frustration, fear, anger, love, hate, joy, grief, and similar feelings. Such emotions were the antithesis of rationality. Certainly some emotions, particularly when exhibited at the wrong time, can reduce employee performance. But this doesn't change the reality that employees bring an emotional component with them to work everyday.

What Are Emotions?
Although we don’t want to obsess on definitions, before we can proceed with out analysis, we need to clarify three terms that are closely intertwined. These are affect, emotions, and moods.
Affect is generic term that covers a broad range of feelings that people experience. It's an umbrella concept encompasses both emotions and moods. Emotions are intense feelings that are directed at someone or something. Finally moods are feelings that tend to be less intense than emotions and that lack a contextual stimulus.
Emotions are reactions to an object, not a trait. They are object specific. You show your emotions when you're "happy about something, angry at some one, afraid of something." Moods, on the other hand, aren't directed at object. Emotions can tend into moods when you lose focus on the contextual object. So when a work colleague criticizes you for the way you spoke to a client, you might become angry at him. That is, you show emotion (anger) toward a specific object become angry at him. But later in the day, you might find yourself just generally dispirited. You can't attribute this feeling to any single event; you're just not your normal, upbeat self. This effective state describes a mood.
A related term that is gaining increasing importance in management is emotional labor. Every employee expends physical and mental labor when they put their bodies and cognitive capabilities, respectively into their job. But most jobs also require emotional labor. This is when an employee, express organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions.

Felt Versus Displayed Emotions
Emotional labor creates dilemmas for employees when their job requires them to exhibit emotions that are incongruous with their actual feelings. Not surprisingly, this is a frequent occurrence. There are people at work with whom you find it very difficult to be friendly. May be you consider their personality abrasive. Maybe you know they have said negative things about you behind your back. Regardless your job requires you to interact with these people on a regular basis. So you are forced to feign friendliness.
It can help you to better understand emotions if you separate them into felt versus displayed. Felt emotions are individual actual emotions. In contrast, displayed emotions are those there organizationally required and considered appropriate in a given job.

Emotion Dimension
How many emotions are there? In what ways do they vary? We will answer these questions in this section.

Variety There have been numerous efforts to limit and define the fundamental or basic set of emotions. Research has identified six universal emotions: Anger, fear, sadness, happiness, disgust, and surprise.
One facto that has strongly shaped what is and isn't listed in this basic set is the manner in which emotions where identified.
Do these basic six emotions surface in the workplace? Absolutely. I get anger after receiving a poor performance appraisal. I fear that I could be laid off as a result o a company cut back. I'm sad about one of my co-workers leaving to take a new job in another city. I'm happy after selected as employee-of-the-month. I am disgusted with the way my supervisor treats with the women on our team. And I am surprised to find out that management plans a complete restructuring of the company’s retirement programs.

Intensity People give different responses to identical emotion-provoking stimuli. In some case this can be attributed to the individual’s personality. Other times it is a result of the job requirements.
People vary in their inherent ability to express intensity. You undoubtedly know the individuals who almost never show their feelings. They rarely get angry. In contrast, you probably also know people who seem to be an emotional roller coaster. When they’re happy, their ecstatic. When sad, they’re deeply depressed. And two people can be in the exact same situation—with one showing excitement and joy, while the other is calm and collected.

Frequency and Duration How often does an emotion need to be exhibited? And for how long? Emotional labor that requires high frequency or long duration is more demanding and requires more exertion by employees. So weather an employee can successfully meet the emotional demands of a given job depends not only on which emotions need to be displayed and their intensity, but also how frequently and for how long the effort has to be made.

External Constraints on Emotions
An emotion that is acceptable on the athletic playing field may be totally unacceptable when exhibited at the workplace. Similarly what is appropriate in one country is often inappropriate in another. These facts illustrate the role that external constraints play in shaping displayed emotions.
Every organization defines boundaries that identify what emotions are acceptable and the degree to which they can be expressed. The same applies in different cultures.

Organizational Influence There is no single emotional “set” thought by all organizations. However, at least in the United States, the evidence indicates that there’s a bias against negative and intense emotions. Expressions of negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, and anger tend to be unacceptable except under fairly specific conditions.

Cultural Influence Cultural norms in the United States dictate that employee in service organizations should smile and act friendly when interacting with customers.
But this is not worldwide. In Israel, smiling by supermarket cashier is seen as a sign of inexperience, so cashier are encouraged to look somber.

Management Applications
We conclude our discussion of emotions by considering their application to several topics in management. In this section, we assess how knowledge of emotions can help you to better understand the selection process in organizations, decision making, motivation, leadership, interpersonal conflict, and deviant workplace behaviors.

Ability and Selection people who know their own emotions and are good at reading other’s emotions may be more effective in their jobs. That, in essence, is the theme underlying recent research on emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to an assortment of noncognitive skills, compatibilities, and competencies that influence a person’s ability to succeed in coping with environmental demands and pressures. It is composed of five dimensions:

Self-awareness. The ability to be ware of what you are feeling.
Self-management. The ability to manage one’s own emotions and impulses.
Self-motivation. The ability to persist in the face of setbacks and failures.
Empathy. The ability to sense how others are feeling.
Social skills. The ability to handle the emotions of others.

Decision Making Negative emotions can result in limited search for new alternatives and a less vigilant use of information. On the other hand, positive emotions can increase problem solving and facilitate the integration of information.
You can improve your understanding of decision making by considering “the heart”
As well as “the head”. People use emotions as well as rational and intuitive processes in making decisions.

Motivation we want to merely introduce the idea, like decision making, the dominant approaches to the study of motivation reflect an overrationalized view of individuals.
Motivation theories basically propose that individuals "are motivated to the extent that their behavior is expected to lead to desired outcomes. The image is that of rational change: the employee essentially trades effort for pay, security, promotions, and so forth." but people aren't cold, unfeeling machines. Their perceptions and calculations of situations are filled with emotional content that significantly influences how much effect they exert. Moreover, when you see people who are highly motivated in their jobs, they're emotionally committed. people who are engaged in their work "become physically, cognitively, and emotionally immersed in the experience of activity, in the pursuit of a goal.
Are all people emotionally engaged in their work? No! But many are. And if we focus only on rational calculations of inducement and contributions, we fail to be able to explain behaviors such as the individual who forgets to have dinner and works late into the night, lost in the thrill of her work.

Leadership the ability to lead others is a fundamental quality sought by organizations, we briefly introduce how emotions can be an internal part of leadership.
Effective leaders almost all rely on the expression of feelings to help convey their messages. in fact, the expression of emotions in speeches is often the critical element that results in individuals accepting or rejecting of leader's message.
"When leaders feel excited, enthusiastic, and active, they may be more likely to energize their subordinates and convey a sense of efficacy, competence, optimism, and enjoyment." Politicians as a case in point, have learned to show enthusiasm when talking about their chances for winning an election, even when polls suggest otherwise.
Corporate executives know that emotional content is critical if employees are to buy into their visions of their company's future and accept change. When new visions are offered, especially when they contain distance or vague goals, change is often difficult to accept. So when effective leaders want to implement significant changes, they rely on "the evocation, framing, and mobilization of emotions." By arousing emotions and linking them to an appealing vision, leaders increase the likelihood that managers and employees alike will accept change.

Interpersonal Conflict Few issues are more intertwined with emotions that the topic of interpersonal conflict. Whenever conflicts arise, you can be fairly certain that emotions are also surfacing. A manager's success in trying to resolve conflicts, in fact, is often largely due to his or her ability to identify the emotional elements in the conflict and to get the conflicting parties to work through their emotions. And a manager who ignores the emotional elements in conflicts, focusing singularly on rational and task concerns, is unlikely to be very effective in resolving those conflicts.

Deviant workplace behaviors Negative emotions can lead to a number of deviant workplace behaviors.
Anyone who has spent much time in an organization realizes that people often engage in voluntary actions that violate established norms and that threaten the organization, its members, or both. These actions are called employee deviance.