The Workplace and Affect - Brief & Weiss - Article

Organizational behavior is composed of influences of work organizations on people and people on work organizations. This article gives an overview about affective experiences in organizational settings.

Historical Context

Since 1930 it was possible to do scientific research to a social phenomenon, and therefore the understanding of workers’ feelings could increase. Studies were innovative, full discoveries and very diverse. That scientific point of view soon became narrower by neglecting extra-work factors and ignoring qualitative research methods. Between 1985-1990 researches found the principles of moods and emotions. Moods are generalized feeling states that are not typically identified with a particular stimulus, where emotions are associated with specific events and are intense enough to disrupt thought processes.

Affective status of the job satisfaction construct

Job Satisfaction is an affective reaction to one’s job or job experiences and it should have a cognitive and affective content, whereas the cognitive content is more used in measurements, although the affective content influences the job satisfaction more. Job Satisfaction can also be considered as an evaluative judgment.

The production of moods and emotions in the workplace

The article identifies and categories several factors which are influencing the production of moods or emotions in the workplace:

• Exogenous factors: the factors in the workplace that influence the feelings experienced there. Cycles in feelings do occur related to lifestyle and sociocultural factors. Also the group affective tone is an exogenous factor, which can be described as the consistent or homogenous affective reactions within a group.

• Stressful Events or Conditions at Work

• Leaders: leaders can influence the feelings of their followers, especially among transformational leaders, who use strong emotions.

• Work Group Characteristics: The group affective tone is influence by the characteristics and personality traits within groups. People’s moods are influenced by the collective mood of their co-workers over time.

• Physical settings: Physical settings play an important role in the emotions and moods of employees. Although there is small research done, research recognizes customers or clients as mood or emotion generators.

• Organizational rewards

Consequences of moods and emotions in the workplace

Affect-driven behaviors are straight behavioral and cognitive outcomes, often bound in time and the overall judgment of job experience. Judgment-driven behaviors are influenced by evaluative judgments.

The main consequences of moods and emotions:

• Positive mood enables creative problem solving

• Positive mood generally encourage to behave helpfully and cooperative.

• General performance is either increased by positive emotions or negative emotions. This is dependent on the context, since negative emotions can lead to more effective problem solutions and more accurate judgments.

• Negative emotions can also help to achieve more in negotiation context.

• Positive emotions predict absenteeism and both positive and negative emotions are predicting turnover intentions, mediated by commitment.