Affect and emotion play a critical role in the lives of humans across many domains such as family, health, and work. In fact, Forgas (1994) proposes that “affect is a pervasive part of the way we see the world” (p. 40). Many scholars have proposed and developed theories and frameworks regarding affect that can be and have been applied to various work domains. Our focus in this chapter is on the role of affect in the performance management (PM) process. In particular, the work of Forgas and colleagues on the affect infusion model (AIM: Forgas & George, 2001; Forgas & Williams, 2016) and of Weiss and Cropanzano on affective events theory (AET: Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) are helpful in explaining how affect fits into this critical work-related process.

This chapter is about the emotion of interest as it may be experienced in the workplace. Interest has been described as “positive, focused, directed arousal, which prompts approach and engagement with the task” (Ainley, 2007, p. 153). Izard (1991, p. 100) describes the subjective experience of interest as “the feeling of being engaged, caught up, fascinated, or curious … wanting to investigate, become involved, or expand the self by incorporating new information and having new experiences with the person or object that has stimulated the interest. In intense interest or excitement, the person feels animated and enlivened.”

The study of emotions has taken center stage in several areas of organizational scholarship over the past few decades. The mid-1990s saw the emergence of the seminal affective events theory (AET; Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), which proposes that discrete workplace “affective events” elicit “affective responses” that then influence attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. Since then, research has experienced an affective revolution (Barsade, Brief, & Spataro, 2003). Work on emotional contagion (e.g. Barsade, 2002), discrete emotions (e.g. Lazarus & Cohen-Charash, 2001), and multi-level integrations (e.g. Ashkanasy, 2003a; Elfenbein, 2007), among other topics, has rapidly advanced both theory and practice, becoming integral to the lexicon of organizational scholars (Brief & Weiss, 2002).

The service sector accounts for about two-thirds of the world’s output, it provides more than 50 percent of global employment, and its importance has increased in recent decades in every country (United Nations, 2018). Consequently, millions of service encounters take place every day around the world, with implications for organizations, employees, and customers. Emotions, or intense short-lived feelings associated with an object or target (Ekman, 1994), emerge in service encounters as a main facet that offers valuable insights into the interaction between employees and customers. Due to its complexity, the investigation of emotions in service encounters is carried out from different perspectives. The present chapter emphasizes three aspects. First, although this chapter is not exclusively focused on the display of emotions, I emphasize the outward expression of emotions (Diefendorff & Greguras, 2009) through a combination of facial expression, tone of voice, and spoken words (Rafaeli & Sutton, 1987). Expressed or displayed emotions are not necessarily equivalent to felt emotions. Humans learn to display appropriate emotions in different contexts. Norms, often called display rules, describe the appropriate expressions of emotions in a given social situation (Matsumoto, 1990), including emotions in the service encounter (Diefendorff, Morehart, & Gabriel, 2010; Grandey, Rafaeli, Ravid, Wirtz, & Steiner, 2010). Although expressed and felt emotions might coincide, displayed emotions are the ones that are essential in service encounters because they shape the customers’ evaluations of the social interaction and the service delivery (e.g. Pugh, 2001).

While scholars have studied the role of emotions in work settings since Aristotle (see Mastenbroek, 2000, for a historical overview), the topic did not enter mainstream organizational scholarship until the 1990s (Ashkanasy, Härtel, & Daus, 2002; Härtel, Zerbe, & Ashkanasy, 2005). In this chapter, we utilize the five-level model developed by Ashkanasy (2003; see also Ashkanasy & Dorris, 2017; Ashkanasy & Humphrey, 2011) as an organizing framework in reviewing research on ways institutional leaders should manage employee emotions at the organization-wide level. We start with a brief summary of the five-level model before offering recommendations as to (a) how organizational leaders can foster positive affective organizational cultures and climates; and (b) how leaders may avoid creating negative affective organizational cultures and climates. We conclude by discussing the need for leaders to emphasize the value of experiencing and expressing positive and negative affect, and we offer suggestions for future research.

Despite being identified as a pervasive emotion in the modern workplace (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2000), fear oddly has not received a corresponding amount of attention among management researchers. In fact, Kish-Gephart, Detert, Treviño, and Edmondson (2009, p. 163) observe that we still have much to learn about the nature of fear in workplace settings, including “what it is, how and why it is experienced, and to what effects.” Bennis (1966) notes further that fear has always been a part of the work environment (see also Connelly & Turner, 2018), but it remains an especially important issue in today’s workplaces because of the effects of rapid and ongoing organizational change, which are often linked to uncertain outcomes (Bordia, Hobman, Jones, Gallois, & Callan, 2004; Tiedens & Linton, 2001). Our aim in this chapter is to provide an overview of fear (arising from uncertainty) as a discrete emotion, to identify stimuli that may trigger fear at work, and to identify the potential positive and negative outcomes that can be linked to employees’ fear. We also outline potential pathways for future research on fear of uncertainty in the workplace.

Happiness is a core affect – a “neurophysiological state consciously accessible as the simplest raw (non-reflective) feelings evident in moods and emotions,” which is “primitive, universal, and simple, irreducible on the mental plane” (Russell, 2003, p. 148). The label “happiness” is not always applied, and the construct has otherwise been investigated in terms of enjoyment, pleasure, excitement, enthusiasm, comfort, relaxation, and many other positive feelings.

Capturing the essence of workplace affect and its impact has always been challenging, because affect is challenging. It comes in many forms, including moods, state emotions, and dispositional traits, and occurs at multiple levels – individual, team, and organizational – that interact and change dynamically. In this chapter, I will outline qualitative approaches to studying affective phenomena. The primary emphasis will be on state discrete emotions and state moods – in the case of emotions, affective responses focused on a specific target or cause and relatively intense and short-lived, and in the case of moods, more diffuse feeling states not directed to a specific cause (see Barsade & Gibson, 2007) – because these phenomena are most difficult to capture with the tools typically available to organizational researchers. Dispositional traits and sentiments, for example, are relatively reliable and stable and may be measured effectively through a combination of self-report and observational measures (e.g. Staw & Barsade, 1993). Emotions are dynamic, often sudden, fleeting, and disruptive; moods may be a chronic, nagging, bubbling brew. Organizational researchers need appropriate methods to capture this complexity.

In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on the collective affective experiences of work teams. Affective climate (affective experiences shared by team members) has become an important factor in understanding how teams work and the results they produce. Many efforts have been dedicated to identifying the processes through which this collective phenomenon emerges and its antecedents and consequences. In this chapter, we review the literature on affective climate. We begin by addressing what affective climate is, how it is described, and the mechanisms explaining how team members share affect. We follow up by describing emergence processes of affective climate in teams and reviewing its antecedents and consequences. Next, we dedicate a section to examining the dynamic nature of this phenomenon. We conclude by noting some emerging areas of research in the affective climate literature.

Workplace aggression is a significant and prevalent issue facing organizations. Almost all employees report experiencing workplace incivility: low-intensity deviant behavior with ambiguous intent to harm the target (Andersson & Pearson, 1999). More severe forms of workplace aggression happen at lower but still sizable rates. For example, data from the 2014 Canadian General Social Survey indicates that 27 percent of all physically violent incidents occur in the workplace (Perreault, 2015), with women more than twice as likely to be targets of workplace violence than men after adjusting for work hours (Lanthier, Bielecky, & Smith, 2018). These numbers are even more startling when one considers that employees often fail to report workplace aggression. For example, in the hospital environment – a context with elevated risks of aggression – 88 percent of employees who experienced a violent incident did not formally document the incident (Arnetz et al., 2015).

In their review of negotiation research, Bazerman, Curhan, Moore, and Valley (2000) noted that researchers had focused almost exclusively on the role of negotiator cognition in shaping negotiators’ behaviors and outcomes. In the following year, three articles reported research on the role of emotions in negotiation or conflict (Web of Science database). The numbers increased slowly until 2010, when there was a marked increase. Surprisingly, since 2010, the number of new studies testing the impact of emotion on negotiation and conflict strategies and outcomes has been relatively stable and low. Despite the recognition that emotions are an integral part of conflict and negotiation, they remain an under-researched phenomenon.

Building on past reviews on affect research (e.g. Akinola, 2010; Ashkanasy & Dorris, 2017; Larsen & Fredrickson, 1999; Mauss & Robinson, 2009; Peterson, Reina, Waldman, & Becker, 2015), in this chapter we review existing quantitative methods to measure workplace affect and affect regulation, and propose directions for future development in quantitative measurement of these processes. We endorse that affect is a multifaceted, dynamic process comprised of psychological and physiological experiences that informs thought and motivates action (Izard, 2009). Affect can be understood as a trait (general tendency to experience positive or negative feelings) or a state (momentary emotions in response to certain events). Consistent with the rest of this handbook, we use “affect” as an umbrella term that encompasses emotion, feeling, and other related terms.