Employee Positive Emotion and Favorable Outcomes at the Workplace

Employee Positive Emotion and Favorable Outcomes at the WorkplaceAuthor(s): Barry M. Staw, Robert I. Sutton and Lisa H. Pelled Organization Science, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Feb., 1994)Change Instead of simply assessing employee responses to various aspects of the work role, attention has begun to shift toward how social contexts shape attitudes and needs (Salancik and Pfeffer 1978 )dispositional determinants of affect (e.g., Staw et al. 1986), and expressed emotions in organizations (Rafaeli and Sutton 1989) stimulated a new search for the consequences of emotion in the workplaceThis study is among the first attempts to empirically examine the broader consequences of attitudes in the workplace

ProposalThat employees who feel and display positive emotion on the job will experience positive outcomes in their work rolesThe Link Between Employee Positive Emotion and Favorable Outcomes at the WorkplaceFelt positive emotionExpressed positive emotionWork Achievement

Job enrichment

Supportive Social ContextGreater task activity and persistenceEnhanced cognitive functioningGreater interpersonal attractionHalo over generalization to other desirable traitsMore prone to respond favorably to employees social influence attempts

More prone to help othersEffects on employee Others responses to employeeEmployees response to othersIntervening processes Positive emotion at workFavorable employee outcomes at workFAVORABLE out comes Positive emotion has desirable effects independent of a person's relationships with others, including greater task activity, persistence, and enhanced cognitive functioningPeople with positive rather than negative emotion benefit from more favorable responses by othersPeople with positive feelings react more favorably to others, which, is reflected in greater altruism and coop- eration with others

Hypothesize -That the combination of these intervening processes leads to favorable outcomes in the workplace, including achievement (e.g., favorable supervisor evaluations and greater pay), job enrichment (e.g., variety, autonomy, feedback and meaning), and a more supportive social context (e.g., support from coworkers and supervisors)Felt and Expressed Positive EmotionHighly correlated with both self- reports and facial expressions (see Ekman 1982, p. 75)Employees often come to internalize such required emotions (Hochschild 1983, Sutton 1991)Try to feign required emotions that they do not feel, their inner feelings may nonetheless shape expressed emotionsFelt and expressed emotions may be intertwined for both cognitive and physiological reasonsresearch on the connection between mood and creative problem-solvingSubjects induced to be in good moods generate a broader range of associations with common words, recall longer lists of words that are related to one another, and are more likely to solve problems that require seeing a broader set of potential relationships among the elements composing an issue (Isen and Daubman 1984, Isen et al. 1985, Isen et al. 1987)

Exploratory TestMethods Sample- The present study uses data collected by The Univer- sity of Michigan's Survey Research Center - Effectiveness in Work Roles: Employee Responses to Work Environments" (Quinn 1977)Data Sources 1.face-to-face interviews with employees. Professional interviewers from the Survey Research Center staff administered these inter- views, typically at respondents' homes2. at the end of each interview, the interviewer recorded his or her observations of several characteristics of the employee, including gen- der and apparent intelligence3. structured field observations were made by observers while each employee performed his or her job

MeasuresPredictor VariableDependent VariablesSupervisorQ evaluation at time 2Pay at time 2Control Variables

Table 1 ppt1.BMP

HYPOTHESIS 1Employees with greater positive emotion will receive more favorable evaluations of their performance and higher payHYPOTHESIS 2Employees with greater positive emotion will receive more enriched jobsHYPOTHESIS 3Employees with greater positive emotion will receive more social support from supervisors and coworkersconclusionResults indicate that positive emotion on the job at time 1 is associated with evidence of work achievement (more favorable supervisor evaluations and higher pay) and a supportive social context (more support from supervisors and coworkers) at time 2. But positive emotion at time 1 is not significantly associated with job enrichment at time 2