Table Of ContentEmotion in Organizational Change
UsmanTalat
Emotion in
Organizational
Change
An Interdisciplinary Exploration
UsmanTalat
Salford,UnitedKingdom
ISBN978-3-319-47692-6 ISBN978-3-319-47693-3(eBook)
DOI10.1007/978-3-319-47693-3
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A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To my parents, siblings and wife, thanks for your unconditional support.
Iam also grateful forthe guidanceof the editorsat Palgrave.
v
C
ONTENTS
EarlyGreekThought andthe Philosophersof the
Enlightenment Era 1
WorkerReason, Imaginationand Emotion(s)in Change 19
Organizational Change,RiskandEmployee Passions 41
Evolutionary Perspectives onLeadership,Emotion and
Organizational Change 57
The Social PsychologyofEmotion and BiasesDuringChange 83
References 95
Index 109
vii
I
NTRODUCTION
Tobeginwith,considerasmallthoughtexperiment.Imagineyouwakeup
tomorrow and go to work, except this time you feel no emotions. Think
about what would happen in the life of an emotional zombie? Sitting
behind the wheel in your car – with the sun beating down on your
face – you would mechanically move through the traffic in a robotic
manner. A moment later having missed the intended turning you speed
upandovertakethecarinfrontofyou,sharplymakingthenextexit.Your
rash manoeuvre raises eyebrows and perhaps you even manage to anger
other drivers on the road, who watch in frustration. But on your part,
thereisnoguiltaboutthemanoeuvre,nofrustrationatmissingtheturn-
ing, nor any fear about losing control of the situation. The congested
trafficdoesnotperturborfazeyouintheslightest.Inemotionaltermsyou
are dead. In a calm and calculated manner, you make your way through
the city and into your office where you proceed to sit and type away. On
this day, other people capable of feeling emotions would find you to be
irritatingly cold, and difficult to communicate with. Whilst for you com-
munication would simply be a series of exchanges with calculated invest-
ments and returns, for other people engaged in conversation with you,
there would be vital emotional cues missing. For instance, the humorous
jokeyousharewithacolleaguehasnomeaningbeyonditslogicalimplica-
tions:atwhichpointyourcolleaguefeelsembarrassedbecauseyoudonot
reciprocate with laughter. A little later in the day an e-mail is sent out
announcing that the organization is undergoing restructuring and so
changes will be made. The office fizzles with gossip as fear, anger and
confusion sweep the floor. Standing on the sidelines, unable to feel
ix
x INTRODUCTION
emotionalaboutwhatjusthappened,youlogicallythinkabouttheoddsof
job loss and the possible implications for you and others. There is no
anxiety,noanger,noranyfearaboutwhatmightturnouttobethecase.
Soyou continue withyourday.
In the bigger picture, our thought experiment suggests that a person
incapable of emotional experience would live a severely impaired and dys-
functional life. Such a personwould alsomake life difficult for others who
mightstruggletocommunicateandinteractwithhim.Inevitably,emotion
seems both necessary and beneficial for humans. Unfortunately, this idea
has not received a lot of attention amongst organization change theorists.
Initsplace,aperspectivethathasprevailedamongstacademicsandpracti-
tionersisonethatdoesnotshedafavourablelightonemotion.Formostof
the twentieth century, the majority has thought about emotions as some
sortofanimalisticdisease.Iusetheword“disease”tosignifythelackofease
experiencedbyboththeemotionalpersonandotherswhointeractwithhim
insocialsituationsandencounters.Emotionisperceivedassomethingthat
discountstheeasefoundinrationalityanditsvirtues.Byandlargethelatter
has been highly cherished and celebrated in Western thought. On the
ground and within organizations around the world, this has meant that
managersandworkersalikehavethoughtaboutemotionalpeopleasredun-
dant effects of our evolutionary animal past. Thus, emotional behaviour is
firmlyantitheticalanddetrimentaltocivilizedman,whostandsonthecusp
ofrationallivingandsoshouldmakeanefforttoridhimselfofthisdisease.
In one sentence, human society and its organizing efforts should be
dispassionate and without emotions. For most of the twentieth century,
thisstoicideahasdominatedtheoriesinorganizationresearchandtheway
we think about organizations as efficient and rational systems of control.
In favour of this idea, emotion has been held hostage as an undesirable
forcethathampersmodernsocietiesintheireffortstogrowandtothrive
through organizing efforts and plans. This stance, antithetical to the
emotions, has deeply rooted philosophical origins, explored in chapter “
Early Greek Thought and the Philosophers of the Enlightenment Era”.
Fortunately, in more recent years, within the subfield of organizational
change, which constitutes the emotional playground explored in this
book, there has been growing recognition that perhaps emotion is not
noiseafterall!Perhaps,emotionshavemuchtoofferbywayofbenefitsfor
organizationsseekingtocopewithdynamicandfast-pacedenvironments.
The current book explores this thesis by expounding the nature and
workings ofemotion applied toorganizational change.
INTRODUCTION xi
WHAT IS ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE?
Thisabovequestionisnotaneasynotiontograspandshare.Oneneedsto
reflect a little before any conclusive outcome might be apparent or con-
vincing. First, consider the notion of change, which is admittedly a uni-
versalconceptbecauseitappliestoallaspectsofhumanexperience.Itcan
be applied to macro- and micro-phenomena. At a very general and cos-
mologicallevel,theearthcontinuallyfollowsitstrajectoryaroundthesun,
whilstrotatingonitsaxis.Thehoursturnintodays,whichturnintoyears
and in what seems like the blink of an eye in human history, individual
peoplelive out theirdays through innumerableexperiences.
From this perspective, whether we like it or not, organizations are
always changing. They are man-made and purposeful structures experi-
enced as part of a larger social sphere that consists of traditions, culture,
religion,languageandrelationships.Humanactorsfromthecradletothe
grave learn to categorize and statically understand an existence that is
inherently a mass of continual flux. That is, the human social sphere and
thenaturalworldarecontinuouslymovingfromsomediscernibleorderto
apparentchaos.Sometimesthisoccursinapparentlycyclicaltrendsvisible
to humans who come up with inventive methods for recognizing and
making the best of what comes their way. In other words, as time is
experienced and passes by,things appear, grow, declineand witheraway.
This is what one might mean in the phrase “things change”. Intuitively
speaking, this is a principle that applies to things in the physical world,
which form the backbone of Western social progress. Phenomena like
mass industrialization, the erection of skyscrapers, through to the emer-
genceofknowledgeprocessingstructuresandtechnologies,allseemtobe
things that exhibit relative emergence and decline. In neighbouring and
disparatecornersoftheearth,modernWesternmarketsandlifestylesalso
reflect the material organizations that work in apparent cycles and pat-
terns. We might be tempted to concludethat the word“organization” is
nothingifnotapurpose-basedassemblageofmaterialresources,aimedat
somecontrolovertheenvironment.Thisisasomewhatmaterialistorwhat
is known as a reductionist view of reality (Yeganeh and Su 2006; Johns
2006; Dooley 1997). In part, this approach is used in the book to pick
apartorganizationalsystemsandspacesandinsodoingelucidatetherole
employee emotion. The main idea is that change in nature or society can
bereducedbythehumanobservertomeaningfulcategoriesrecognizable
in matter and its forms of flux. In turn, that which is reduced works in
xii INTRODUCTION
complexwaysathigherlevelsoffunction.Atthemacro-systemslevel,the
economy, the politics, the organizing efforts of stakeholders, group
dynamics, cultures and other social phenomena emerge as graspable and
meaningful.These arenarratives imbuedwith emotionaltones.
This latter approach in organization theory stands opposite to reduc-
tionist tendencies and practice. Abstractly, proponents of this approach
assertthatallchangeissociallyconstructedandcollectivelyrecognized.As
conscious beings, humans impose on reality a sequence that orders and
reorders things, which are otherwise changeless and meaningless forms.
From this perspective, an organization that changes is one that is recog-
nized both rationally and emotionally, as a psychological necessity and
exploration. The observer frames and subjectively projects outwards a
picture of reality and all the things it consist of in their distinctions and
relations. Given this position, organizations and their organizing efforts
receive meaning from social actors, going about their business, imposing
theirwillonabattlefieldofsubjectiveviews;sometimesactorscolludeand
at other times they collide in their subjective understanding (see Berger
and Luckman 1966). Emotion functions to enable guidance over
employee attention, interactions, perceptions, conceptions and imagina-
tions. For those within the social constructionist camp, organizations
represent what Fineman (1993) calls emotional arenas, wherein battles
are fought by actors guided through their feelings and passionate desires
about creatingvalue inlife; beit forpleasure,pain orsomeother end.
Reductionistsseektounderstandchangebyreducingandcategorizing
change components. Reductionism gave rise to ideas such as division of
labour, the idea of task, interchangeability of parts, standard procedures,
quality control, cost accounting, time and motion study and organiza-
tional charts. It is an analytical journey. Social constructionists tend to
synthesize towards varying levels of context complexity, wherein change
representsmeaningshapedbynarrativesofscholarsandpractitioners.The
current book in its inter-disciplinary approach leaves open the possibility
ofeitherareductionistorconstructionistinterpretation,particularlyinso
far asone orthe otherprogresses knowledgeof organizations.
STRUCTURE AND CONTENT OF THE BOOK
Indevelopingainter-disciplinaryfocus,thechaptersinthisbookexpound
ideas from several disciplines. Chapter “Early Greek Thought and the
Philosophers of the Enlightenment Era explores ideas of philosophy”.
