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Recent research on service interactions indicates that negative displays of emotion by service providers play an important role in customer perceptions of the quality of the service. In this study, we examined the relations between attributions of responsibility for problems and the displays of negative emotions by service providers in service interactions. We hypothesized that attributions of responsibility for problems moderate the relation between the negativity of service providers’ prior and subsequent emotion displays and the relation between the negativity of emotion display by customers and service providers. To test our hypotheses, we collected data from telephone service interactions in a large retail bank in the northeastern United States and measured the negativity of emotion displays by using the Dictionary of Affect in Language. Our results showed that (1) the negativity of service providers’ prior emotion displays predicts the negativity of their subsequent displays, and (2) this relation is moderated by the attribution of responsibility for problems.

Although social influence plays an important role in organizational groups, past findings regarding culture's impact on social influence have been scarce and inconsistent. Past research has found that people from collectivist cultures are more susceptible to social influence, while other studies have found the opposite or no effect. One major weakness of prior research on social influence is the predominantly cognitive orientation that has underemphasized the role of affect in culture's impact on social influence. We address this weakness by outlining an affective model of social influence, thereby expanding our understanding of social influence in multicultural decision-making groups.

Previous research has demonstrated the importance of emotion recognition ability in negotiations and leadership, but scant research has investigated the role of emotion recognition ability in service contexts. The purpose of this paper is to propose and test a compensatory model in which service employees’ emotion recognition ability helps enhance their job performance, particularly when employees score low on the agreeableness personality dimension or have low cognitive ability.

With a two-wave multisource dataset collected from a service center of a large retail bank, multiple regression analysis was used to test the moderating roles of agreeableness and cognitive ability on the relationship between service employees’ emotion recognition ability and their performance.

Service employees’ emotion recognition ability helped enhance their job performance. However, the positive effect of emotion recognition ability on job performance was only statistically significant when employees’ agreeableness or cognitive ability was low.

The findings have important implications for how service organizations select and recruit employees. In particular, service employees with low agreeableness or cognitive ability may still be able to perform well when possessing high emotion recognition ability. Therefore, emotion recognition ability should be considered in the selection and recruitment process.

Going beyond self-report measures of emotion recognition and using a performance measure from organizational records, this study is one of the first to examine how emotion recognition ability interacts with personality and cognitive ability in predicting service employees’ effectiveness in a service organization.

The purpose of this paper is to compare conflict management behaviors of American and Chinese managers. Its main aim is to uncover cultural differences in the way Chinese and American managers approach conflict – thereby developing a more thorough understanding of conflict management across cultures.

Inductive analysis is used to uncover conflict management constructs that are unique to each culture. Structured interviews and multidimensional scaling techniques are used.

Results show that the conflict management behaviors suggested by American and Chinese managers are different. For Chinese managers alone, embarrassing the colleague and teaching a moral lesson is an important element. For American managers alone, hostility and vengefulness are important elements. Results suggest that both cultures acknowledge avoidant approaches, but the underlying intentions for Americans alone are associated with a lack of confidence.

Results are based on one conflict scenario and the participants are managers working in mainland China. These factors may limit the generalizability of the results.

The findings of this paper suggest that managers should consider cultural differences in conflict management when diagnosing and intervening in conflict situations in different cultures.

The authors present new concepts for potential inclusion in a comprehensive model of conflict management. The authors illustrate the value of using an inductive approach to improve our understanding of conflict management across cultures.

Research on teams in organizations inadequately reflects the importance of individual-level identity processes. This study seeks to redress this situation by answering three questions: what is the content of the individuals’ identities in the workplace; why do individuals communicate their identities in the workplace; and how do individuals communicate identities in the workplace. The results of an interview-based study of 36 IT professionals suggest that the subjective identities that are important to individuals in the workplace are rarely those that are derived from objective demographic characteristics. We have also developed two taxonomies of identity communication processes revolving around the reasons for identity communication and the methods of identity communication.

Joanne Abbey

As reported in Volume 1 of Research on Emotions in Organizations (Ashkanasy, Zerbe, & Härtel, 2005), the chapters in this volume are drawn from the best contributions to the 2004 International Conference on Emotion and Organizational Life held at Birkbeck College, London, complemented by additional, invited chapters. (This biannual conference has come to be known as the “Emonet” conference, after the listserv of members.) Previous edited volumes (Ashkanasy, Härtel, & Zerbe, 2000; Ashkanasy, Zerbe, & Härtel, 2002; Härtel, Zerbe, & Ashkanasy, 2004) were published every two years following the Emonet conference. With the birth of this annual Elsevier series came the opportunity for greater focus in the theme of each volume, and for greater scope for invited contributions. This volume contains eight chapters selected from conference contributions for their quality, interest, and appropriateness to the theme of this volume, as well as four invited chapters. We again acknowledge in particular the assistance of the conference paper reviewers (see the appendix). In the year of publication of this volume the 2006 Emonet conference will be held in Atlanta, USA and will be followed by Volumes 3 and 4 of Research on Emotions in Organizations. Readers interested in learning more about the conferences or the Emonet list should check the Emonet website http://www.uq.edu.au/emonet/.