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Recently, scholars from a wide variety of disciplines have begun to study the influence of attention, mimicry, and social context on emotional contagion. In this chapter, we will review the classic evidence documenting the role of these factors in sparking primitive emotional contagion, especially in occupational settings. Then we will discuss the new evidence, which scholars have amassed to help us better understand the role of culture in fostering the ability to read others’ thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Finally, we will briefly speculate as to where future research might be headed.

The quality of strategic decisions made at the helm of corporations matters a great deal. Predominantly, research on strategic decision-making has focused on CEOs as if they decide alone. Yet in reality, even the most powerful CEO makes strategic decisions together with an executive board. This chapter offers a theoretical explanation of strategic board decision-making through the emotional contagion between the CEO and board members.

We used both previous research and qualitative material – two case studies and interviews with several dozen CEOs of large corporations as well as the board members of one of them – to build our theoretical model.

Our inBoard Emotional Contagion Model (inBECM) specifies the following individual–collective emotional dynamics: After a strategic affective event has triggered an affective discussion within the boardroom, the emotionally intelligent CEO communicates verbally in order to – through an emotional contagion – homogenize board members’ emotional states leading to shared sense-making of the event and – potentially – to improved decision-making.

Suggestions are made for the inBECM contribution to emotion theory. Implications are stated for the key role of emotion in improving board decision-making and strategizing.

Abusive supervision is associated with many detrimental consequences. In this theory-review chapter, we extend the abusive supervision literature in two ways. First, we argue that more attention needs to be given to the emotion contagion processes between the leader and followers. More specifically, leaders’ negative affect can lead to followers’ experiences of negative affect, thereby influencing followers’ perception of abusive supervision. Second, we explore how employees draw upon their cognitive prototypes of an ideal leader or Implicit Leadership Theories (ILTs) to evaluate leader behaviors. In this regard, we argue that ILTs can influence the (negative) emotional contagion process between the leaders’ negative affect and followers’ perception of abusive supervision. In our proposed model, leaders’ expressions of negative affect, via emotional contagion, influence followers’ negative affect, perception of abusive supervision, and two behavioral responses: affect- and judgment-driven. The negative emotional contagion process between the leader and followers also differs depending on followers’ susceptibility to emotional contagion and their ILTs. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of our model.

Introduced into the literature a decade ago, grit originally defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals has stimulated considerable research on positive effects primarily in the academic and military contexts, as well as attracted widespread media attention. Despite recent criticism regarding grit’s construct and criterion-related validity, research on grit has begun to spill over into the work context as well. In this chapter, the authors provide an overview of the initial theoretical foundations of grit as a motivational driver, and present newer conceptualizations on the mechanisms of grit’s positive effects rooted in goal-setting theory. Furthermore, the authors also draw attention to existing shortcomings of the current definition and measurement of grit, and their implications for its scientific and practical application. After establishing a theoretical understanding, the authors discuss the potential utility of grit for human resource management, related to staffing and recruitment, development and training, and performance management systems as well as performance evaluations. The authors conclude this chapter with a discussion of necessary and potential future research, and consider the practical implications of grit in its current state.

Work design has largely overlooked cognitive–emotional interactions in understanding employee motivation and satisfaction. My aim in this chapter is to develop a conceptual model that integrates what we know about these interactions from research on emotions and neuroscience with traditional and emergent work design perspectives. I propose that striving for universal goals influences how a person responds to the work characteristics, such that an event that is personally relevant or “self-referential” will elicit an emotional reaction that must be regulated for optimal performance, job satisfaction, and well-being. A Self-Referential Emotion Regulatory Model (SERM) of work design is presented.

The application of physiological methods to the study of psychological phenomena has garnered considerable interest in recent years. These methods have proved especially useful to the study of emotions, since evidence suggests that validly measuring a person’s emotional state using traditional, psychometric methods such as surveys or observation is considerably more difficult than once thought. The present chapter reviews the challenges associated with measuring emotions from a purely psychological perspective, and suggests that the study of emotions in organizations can benefit from the use of physiological measurement to complement traditional assessment methods. We review more established approaches to physiological measurement, including those related to hormone secretion, cardiovascular activity, and skin conductance. We then highlight somewhat more recent attempts to use neurological scanning. A theme of this chapter is that both psychological and physiological measures are relevant to understanding and assessing emotions in organizations. Accordingly, we propose a multi-method approach involving both types of assessment. Finally, we discuss the practical and ethical implications of employing various forms of physiological measurement in the study of emotions, specifically in the context of organizations.

Maintaining and protecting employee well-being and health is of paramount importance for organizations in order to prevent financial losses due to illness, absenteeism, and fluctuation. This chapter discusses the role of team meetings for employee well-being. As the contemporary workplace is shaped by team work, team meetings increasingly shape employees’ experiences at work. As such, team meetings may also have a major influence on employee well-being as they consume large amounts of time and thus strongly influence workers’ schedules. While previous research has predominantly focused on negative aspects of meetings and mainly considered them as a workplace stressor, this chapter advances a positive perspective on meetings as opportunities for boosting rather than impairing employee well-being. Upon reviewing the extant evidence about linkages between workplace meetings and well-being, the authors highlight the role of team dynamics during meetings for individual well-being and suggest new perspectives for future research. The authors also discuss actionable implications for structuring and facilitating meetings in order to avoid negative and increase positive effects of team meeting interactions on employee well-being.

Workarounds represent informal modifications to rules and procedures that individuals will engage into navigate around a process block in order to make their job easier. Although workarounds have been primarily studied from an individual-level perspective, this chapter argues that workarounds are a socially constructed, multilevel phenomenon, meaning that they are influenced by others (e.g., group norms and coworkers) and can result in the emergence of workaround climates. We find empirical support for the view that workarounds are shaped by a variety of social influences. Moreover, based on an inductive exploratory study, we suggest that workarounds are related to informal training and troubleshooting behaviors. We conclude by outlining several theory-based directions for understanding how workarounds spread throughout all levels of an organization as an incubator for future research.

THE phrase ‘research and development’ could be applied to all the activity in the hovercraft field from the time of C. S. Cockerell's original coffee tin experiment. Such an interpretation is obviously beyond the scope of this paper. It also appears to be impracticable to attempt to define the boundary between research and development. It is important, however, to consider the extent of the R. & D. effort which should be devoted to this entirely new form of transport.

The existing literature on emotion regulation strategies provides important insights with regards to intrapersonal strategies for emotion regulation. However, in pointing out the limitations of intrapersonal emotion regulation models, it has been suggested that emotion regulation is not confined to intrapersonal processes and the complex social networks that humans form are intricately connected to their emotions. The previous work on financial traders has recognized the relevance of emotions in trading, focusing only on intrapersonal emotion regulation strategies. In this chapter, drawing on the author’s previous research on emotions in trading as well as existing research on social sharing of emotions and interpersonal emotion regulation, interpersonal emotion regulation strategies in the work of financial traders are identified. In doing so, an existing definition of interpersonal emotion regulation is extended and it is argued that while the pursuit of a regulatory goal is paramount, the benefits of interpersonal regulation may be achieved even in the absence of live social interaction, as long as labeling of the affective state takes place. The chapter concludes with a model summarizing intra–interpersonal emotion regulation processes.