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Developments in the social neurosciences over the past two decades have rendered problematic the main knowledge elicitation techniques currently in use by strategy researchers, as a basis for revealing actors’ mental representations of strategic knowledge. Extant elicitation techniques were advanced during an era when cognitive scientists and organizational researchers alike were preoccupied with the basic information of processing limitations of decision makers and means of addressing them, predicated on an outmoded conception of strategists as affect-free, cognitive misers. The need to adapt these techniques to enable the investigation of the emotional content and structure of actors’ mental representations is now a pressing priority for the advancement of theory, research, and practice pertaining to several interrelated areas of strategic management, from dynamic capabilities development, to upper echelons theory, to strategic consensus formation. Accordingly, in this chapter, we report the findings of two studies that investigated the feasibility of adapting the repertory grid, a robust method, widely known and well used in strategic management, for this purpose. Study 1 elicited a series of commonly mentioned strategic issues (the elements) from a sample of senior managers similar in composition to the sample recruited to the second study. Study 2 participants evaluated the elements elicited in Study 1 in relation to a series of researcher-supplied bipolar attributes (the constructs), based on the well-known affective circumplex model of human emotions. In line with expectations, a series of vector-based multivariate analyses revealed a number of interesting similarities and variations among participants in terms of the basic structure and emotional salience of the issues under consideration.

I draw on psychological and sociological theories of affect to depict the relatively stable set of moods and emotions that an individual experiences in social interactions with a given person (relational affect) as a fundamental engine of social action influencing both how and with whom employees perform assigned tasks. I discuss an approach to define and measure relational affect that complements the typical network approach to affect. I then explore motivational mechanisms through which relational affect influences task tie formation and functioning. I conclude that relational affect contributes directly to individuals’ ability to achieve task goals, and to organizational functioning generally.

Proactivity is a type of goal-directed work behavior in which individuals actively take charge of situations to bring about future change in themselves or their organization. In this chapter, we draw on goal-regulation research to review conceptual and empirical evidence that elucidates some of the complex links of affective experience and employee proactivity. We identify the different ways in which affective experience influences different stages of proactivity, including employees’ efforts in setting a proactive goal (envisioning), preparing to implement their proactive goal (planning), implementing their proactive goal (enacting), and engaging in learning from their proactive goal process (reflecting). Overall, our review suggests an important, positive role of high-activated positive trait affectivity and moods in motivating proactivity across multiple goal stages, as compared to low-activated positive affectivity and moods. The role of negative affect is mixed, and likely depends on both its valence and the stage of proactivity that is being considered. We identify a lack of research on the role of discrete emotions for employee proactivity. We discuss future avenues for research, particularly the roles of intra- and inter-personal emotion regulation for proactivity and of affective embeddedness of proactive processes in the social environment of organizations.

Experience sampling methods (ESM) have enabled researchers to capture intensive longitudinal data and how worker well-being changes over time. The conceptual advances in understanding the variability of well-being are discussed. These emerging forms in the literature include affective inertia, affective variability, affective reactivity, and density distributions. While most ESM research has relied on the active provision of data by participants (i.e., self-reports), technological advances have enabled different forms of passive sensing that are useful for assessing and tracking well-being and its contextual factors. These include accelerometer data, location data, and physiological data. The strengths and weaknesses of passively sensed data and future ways forward are discussed, where the use of both active and passive forms of ESM data in the assessment and promotion of worker well-being is expected.

Scholars have argued that different forms of proactive behaviors (e.g., career initiative, feedback seeking, and taking charge) all involve employees’ self-initiated and future-focused efforts to bring about change in a situation (Parker et al., 2006). There are at least three important elements that define proactivity: future-focus, change-orientation, and self-initiation (Frese & Fay, 2001; Parker et al., 2006). First, proactive behavior is future-focused, which means that this action is targeted at anticipated problems or at opportunities with a long-term focus. Second, proactive behavior is change-oriented, involving not just reacting to a situation but being prepared to change that situation in order to bring about a different future. Third, and underpinning the prior two elements, proactive behavior is self-initiated, which means that employees initiate a proactive goal without being told to, or without requiring explicit instructions from supervisors. Accordingly, proactivity has also been conceived of as a process in which employees generate and implement, under their own direction, a proactive goal to bring about a different future (Bindl, Parker, Totterdell, & Hagger-Johnson, 2012; Frese & Fay, 2001; Grant & Ashford, 2008).

In this chapter we examine some possibilities of using computer simulation methods to model the interaction of affect and cognition in organizations, with a particular focus on agent-based modeling (ABM) techniques. Our chapter has two main aims. First, we take stock of methodological progress in this area, highlighting important developments in the modeling of affect and cognition in other fields, including psychology and economics. Second, we outline how ABM in particular can help to advance managerial and organizational cognition by building and testing theoretical models predicated on the interaction of affect and cognition. We argue that using ABM for this purpose can improve the level of specificity of cognitive and affective concepts and their interrelationships in organizational theories, yield more behaviorally plausible models of behavior in and of organizations, and deepen understanding of the generative behavioral mechanisms of multi-level organizational phenomena. We highlight possibilities for using ABM to model affect–cognition interactions in studies of mental models, collective cognition, diversity in work groups and teams, and organizational decision-making.

Most network research in organizations assumes away the dissociative forces instantiated in negative ties, instead pursuing ties that reflect only associative forces, to the detriment of understanding organizational networks. This essay provides a brief history of negative tie research in organizations; discusses different definitions of negative ties, situating them within the tripartite model of interpersonal attitudes; suggests alternative paths to network dynamics when considering negative ties; covers existing and suggested paths to studying personality antecedents of negative ties; and briefly reviews the research on the consequences of negative ties in organizations and suggestions for future work.

Purpose – This chapter presents a social emotions-based analysis of justice dynamics, emphasizing the important influence of social emotions (e.g., envy, empathy, schadenfreude, and vicarious joy) on justice judgments and reactions. The chapter also identifies a dimension for organizing social emotions, based on the degree of congruence they reflect between self and other. Congruent social emotions align the individual experiencing the emotion with the individual who is the target of their emotion, thus leading individuals to reason about and perceive justice in ways that are aligned with the target. Conversely, incongruent social emotions create misalignment and lead to justice perceptions that are misaligned and oppositional with regard to the target.

Methodology/approach – The chapter is informed by research suggesting that justice judgments are subjective. We consider the perspective of each of the key parties to justice (i.e., decision makers, justice recipients, and third parties) to evaluate the effect of (in)congruent social emotions on justice.

Findings – The core argument advanced in the chapter is that the (in)congruence of parties’ social emotions shape whether people evaluate the outcomes, procedures, and treatment encountered by a target as being fair. Fairness judgments, in turn, shape parties’ actions and reactions.

Originality/value – The chapter is the first to offer a framework integrating research on organizational justice with research on social emotions, arguing that social emotions strike at the very foundation of justice dynamics in groups and teams. In addition, the congruence dimension described in the chapter offers a novel and potentially important way of thinking about social emotions.

Comparing two different descriptions of the atmosphere of one and the same city allows for interesting insights regarding the production, duration and perception of urban atmospheres. Aspects of time are very important in this context as they form typical atmospheres here and always, ensure that the patina of the city and the people is based on experience, and generate expectations prior to actually felt-bodily perceptions by means of narration. Changes in environmental qualities or modes of perception can provide clues to both typologies of places and the people present. Moreover, this chapter introduces the Atmospheric Portfolio, which illustrates how research on personal atmospheric perception as well as site-specific atmospheres of a location becomes possible. In the sense of further heuristic starting points, methods employed by other research projects will supplement the study.