Emotion in the Workplace

Most org models portray them as logical and rational. But this is far from the truth since many decisions and plans are made through emotion rather than logic . Bounded emotionality is looking at emotional life as a central focus or organizational research and to consider ways in which paying attention to emotion might lead to new ways of understanding the work place.

Emotion as Part of the Job
Many exchanges are affective, in medicine and airline industries.
Emotional labor - the customer is always right, cruise ship and resort employees.

• Most research considers front line employees are expected to display certain feelings in order to satisfy role expectations.
• Emotions are controlled through some type of corporate response training.
• As you can imagine, emotions are not always genuine.
• Some professionals require true empathic emotions germane to the context - hospice

Emotion as Part of Workplace Relationships


Everyone feels something in the workplace
Workplace bullying

Potential for intense emotion in the workplace:

• public versus private tensions
• gossip
• conflicting allegiances
• moral polarization

Emotion Rules and Emotional Intelligence

• Rules may be unstated, but there's a social agreement in most org contexts.
• Some people may be better at understadning and managing emotional content.