Workplace emotions, attitudes, and stress - summary of chapter 4 of Organizational Behavior by Mcshane, S. (8th edition)

Organizational Behavior
Chapter 4
Workplace emotions, attitudes, and stress

Emotions in the workplace

Emotions influence almost everything we do in the workplace.
Often occur before cognitive processes and, consequently influence them.

Emotions: physiological, behavioral, and psychological episodes experienced toward an object, person, or event that create a state of readiness.
Quite short.
Directed toward someone or something.
Emotions are experiences, they represent changes in our physiological state, psychological state and behavior.
Most of these emotional reactions are subtle, they occur without our awareness.

Moods are not directed towards anything in particular and tend to be long-term emotional states.

Types of emotions

All emotions have two common features.

• An associated valance (core affect) signaling that the perceived object or event should be approached or avoided.
• The level of activation

Emotions, attitudes, and behavior

Attitudes are judgments, whereas emotions are experiences.
We experience emotions very briefly, whereas our attitude towards something or someone is more stable over time.

Beliefs

These are your established perceptions about the attitude object, what you believe to be true.
Each of these beliefs also has a valence, you have a positive or negative feeling about each belief.

Feelings

Represent your conscious positive or negative evaluations of the attitude object.
Most of the time, your beliefs about something or someone affect your feelings, but the reverse sometimes occurs. Your feelings about something can cause you to change your feelings about specific beliefs regarding that target.

Behavioral intentions

Your motivation to engage in a particular behavior regarding the attitude object.

Attitude-behavior contingencies

• People with the same beliefs might form quite different feelings toward the attitude object because they have different valences for those beliefs.
• People with the same feelings toward the attitude object often develop different behavioral intentions because of their unique experiences, personal values, self-concept, and other individual differences.

How emotions influence attitudes and behavior

Our brain tags incoming sensory information with emotional markers based on a quick and imprecise evaluation of whether that information supports or threatens our innate drives.
They are automatic and non-conscious.
The experienced emotions influence our feelings about the attitude object.

Generating positive emotions at work

Cognitive dissonance

Cognitive dissonance: an emotional experience caused by a perception that our beliefs, feelings, and behavior are incongruent with one another.

Managing emotions at work

Emotional labor: the effort, planning, and control needed to express organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions.
Display rules: norms or explicit rules requiring us within our role to display specific emotions and to hide other emotions.

Emotional display norms across cultures

Norms about displaying or hiding your true emotions vary considerably across cultures.

Emotional dissonance

The psychological tension experienced when the emotions people are required to display are quite different from the emotions they actually experience at that moment.

• Surface acting: they pretend that they feel the expected emotion even though they actually experience a different emotion.
  Can lead to higher stress and burnout.
  Pretending to feel particular emotions can be challenging.
  Reduce psychological damage caused by surface acting by viewing their act as a natural part of their role.
• Deep acting: involves visualizing reality differently, which then produces emotions more consistent with the required emotions.

Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence (EI): a set of abilities to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotion in thought, understand and reason with emotion, and regulate emotion in oneself and others.
Includes a set of abilities:

• Awareness of our own emotions
• Management of our own emotions
• Awareness of others’ emotions, relates to empathy
• Management of other’s emotions

The four dimensions form a hierarchy.

Emotional intelligence outcomes and development

Most jobs involve social interaction with coworkers or external stakeholders, sos employees need emotional intelligence to work effectively.

Job satisfaction

A person’s evaluation of his or her job and work context.
An appraisal of the perceived job characteristics, work environment, and emotional experiences at work.

Job satisfaction and work behavior

Exit-voice-loyalty-neglect (EVLN) model
Identifies four ways that employees respond to dissatisfaction:

• Exit
  Leaving the organization, or at least trying to get away form the dissatisfying situation.
• Voice
  Any attempt to change the dissatisfying situation. Can be a constructive response, or more confrontational.
• Loyalty
  Patiently waiting for the problem to work itself out or be resolved by others
• Neglect
  Reducing work effort, paying less attention to quality, and increasing absenteeism and lateness.

How employees respond to job dissatisfaction depends on the person and situation. And past experiences.

Job satisfaction and performance

There is a moderately positive relationship between job satisfaction and performance. Workers tend to be more productive to some extent when they have more positive attitudes toward their job and workplace.
But,

• General attitudes don’t predict specific behaviors very well
• Some employees have little control over their performance because their work effort is paced by work technology or interdependence with coworkers in the production process
• Job performance might cause job satisfaction, rather than vice versa.

Job satisfaction and customer satisfaction

Service profit chain model: a theory explaining how employees’ job satisfaction influences company profitability indirectly through service quality, customer loyalty, and related factors.

Two explanations why satisfied employees tend to produce happier and more loyal customers.

• Job satisfaction tends to put employees in a more positive mood
• Satisfied employees are less likely to quit their jobs

Job satisfaction and business ethics

Organizational commitment

Affective organizational commitment: an individual’s emotional attachment to, involvement in, and identification with an organization.

Continuance commitment: an individual’s calculative attachment to an organization.
This calculation takes two forms:

• Where an employee has no alternative employment opportunities
• Where leaving the company would be a significant financial sacrifice.

Consequences of affective and continuance commitment

Affective commitment can be a significant competitive advantage.
Also higher motivation and job performance.
But:

• High conformity
  To motivated to defend the organization
• High levels of continuance commitment
  Lower performance

Building organizational commitment

• Justice and support
• Shared values
• Trust
• Organizational comprehension
• Employee involvement

Work-related stress and its management

Stress: an adaptive response to a situation that is perceived as challenging or threatening to the person’s well-being.

• Distress: the degree of physiological, psychological, and behavioral deviation from healthy well-being.
• Eustress: a necessary part of life because it activates and motivates people to achieve goals, change their environments, and succeed in life’s challenges.

General adaptation syndrome

A model of the stress experience, consisting of three stages:

1. Alarm reaction
   When a treat or challenge activates the physiological stress responses
2. Resistance
   Activates various biochemical, psychological, and behavioral mechanisms to overcome or remove the source of stress
   The body reduces the immune system during this stage
   People have a limited resistance capacity, and if the source of stress persists, the individual will eventually move to the third stage
3. -Exhaustion

Consequences of distress

Stress takes toll on the human body

• Tension headaches
• Muscle pain

High stress also contributes to

• Cardiovascular disease

Job burnout
(order of symptoms):

• Emotional exhaustion
• Cynicism or depersonalization
• Reduced feelings of personal accomplishments

Stressors: the causes of stress

Stressors: any environmental conditions that place a physical or emotional demand on the person.

Organizational constraints

Includes lack of:

• Equipment
• Supplies
• Budget funding
• Coworker support
• Information
• Other resources necessary to complete the required work.

Interpersonal conflict

Employees frequently disagree with each other regarding how to achieve organizational goals as well as how the work and resources should be distributed along that journey.
In organizational settings, most interpersonal conflict is caused by structural sources such as ambiguous rules, lack of resources, and conflicting goals between employee departments.
Psychological harassment: repeated and hostile or unwanted conduct, verbal comments, actions, or gestures that affect and employee’s dignity or psychological or physical integrity and that result in a harmful work environment for the employee.

Work overload

Work overload is evident when employees consume more of their personal time to get the job done.

Low task control

Workplace stress is higher when employees lack control over how and when they perform their tasks as well as lack control over the place of work activity.

Individual differences in stress

People exposed to the same stessor experience different levels of stress because:

• The employee’s physical health
• The coping strategy employees use to ward off a particular stressor. People have the tendency to rely on one or two coping strategies.
• Personality

Managing work-related stress

Remove the stressor

Some of the more common actions:

• Assigning employees to jobs that match their skills and preferences
• Reducing excessive workplace noise
• Having a complaint system that takes coorective action against harassment
• Giving employees more control over the work process

And facilitating better work-life balance

• Flexible and limited work time
• Job sharing
• Telecommuting (or teleworking)
• Personal leave (like extended maternity, paternity)
• Child care support

Withdraw from the stressor

Permanent withdraw occurs when employees are transferred to jobs that are more compatible with their abilities and values.
Temporarily withdrawing from stress is the most frequent way that employees manage stress. (like vacations or nap rooms)

Change stress perceptions

Positive self-evaluation and optimism

Control stress consequences

Regular exercise and maintaining a healthy lifestyle are effective stress management strategies because they control stress consequences.

Receive social support

When coworkers, supervisors, family members, friends, and others provide emotional and/ or informational support to buffer an individual’s experience.