Article Review: Organizational Culture, Change and Emotions: A Qualitative Study

Article Review

Titled: Organizational Culture, Change and Emotions: A Qualitative Study

Written by R.K. Smollan and J.G. Sayers

Published in 2009 in Journal of Change Management, Volume 9, Issue no, 4.

What was the issue/problem explained by the researchers?

Change is an inevitable and a continuous process in organizations; however, with the advent of financial crisis; many organizations were forced to implement various types of changes. The relationship between cultural change and employees' emotional response to those changes has never been studied in earlier researches. However, if managers are aware of their employees' response to various types of changes, they might be able to design change strategies which could result in much lesser resistance.

2. What was the stated “purpose” for their research?

The stated purpose of the research was;

To assess the kinds of emotions which get triggered when an organizational culture undergoes a change

To assess the ways in which emotions are being expressed and experienced when any type of change occurs within an organizational culture

Indentify the ways in which affective response to existing organizational culture influences affective responses to changes in varied settings

3. What was the theoretical (concept/construct) focus/topic and how were the concepts/constructs defined?

The theoretical focus of the research was on understanding the relationship between cultural change and emotions, affective culture, and affective responses to existing culture. The three constructs; emotions, organizational culture, and change have been appropriately defined in the literature. Briefly put, the researchers established that positive and negative emotions are triggered by organizational change. They also vividly defined culture within organizational context, which can be simply put as codes and values that are embedded in the behavior and psychology of a group of people working within the same environment (Driskill & Branton, 2011).

Affective culture or the emotional aspect of an organizational culture is another construct which has been defined as integration of various sub-constructs namely; emotional labor, perceived organizational support, organizational emotional intelligence and systemic justice. Emotional labor indicates that different factors at workplace influence how one displays and suppresses various emotions. Factors influencing the emotional display at work are usually governed by cultural values; thus, some organizations might find it ill-professionalism to display emotions at workplace, whereas others might foster emotional responses.

The second construct which governs the emotional aspect of an organization culture is the extent of support which employees perceive to receive from their superiors. Support to ...