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Research in industrial and organizational psychology demonstrates that the regulation of negative emotions in response to both organizational stressors and interpersonal workplace interactions can result in functional and dysfunctional outcomes (Côté, 2005; Diefendorff, Richard, & Yang, 2008). Research on the regulation of negative emotions has additionally been conducted in social psychology, developmental psychology, neuropsychology, health psychology, and clinical psychology. A close reading of this broader literature, however, reveals that the conceptualization and use of the term “emotion regulation” varies within each research field as well as across these fields. The main focus of our chapter is to make sense of the term “emotion regulation” in the workplace by considering its use across a broad range of psychology disciplines. We then develop an overarching theoretical framework using disambiguating terminology to highlight what we argue are the important constructs involved in the process of intrapersonal emotion generation, emotional experience regulation, and emotional expression regulation in the workplace (e.g., emotional intelligence, emotion regulation strategies, emotion expression displays). We anticipate this chapter will enable researchers and industrial and organizational psychologists to identify the conditions under which functional regulation outcomes are more likely to occur and then build interventions around these findings.

In organizations, it is common to talk about how wisely people manage their emotions. Even so, it is often not obvious whether a particular act of emotion regulation is wise or unwise and, to date, research has provided little guidance to judge the wisdom of emotion regulation efforts. We develop a model that construes wise emotion regulation as a process that involves: (a) setting an effective emotion regulation goal, (b) choosing an appropriate strategy to achieve that goal, (c) implementing that strategy effectively, and (d) adapting emotion regulation over time. We also develop propositions linking emotional intelligence to wise emotion regulation. Finally, we discuss the implications of our model and propositions for research and practice.

Scholars and practitioners in the OB literature nowadays appreciate that emotions and emotional regulation constitute an inseparable part of work life, but the HRM literature has lagged in addressing the emotional dimensions of life at work. In this chapter therefore, beginning with a multi-level perspective taken from the OB literature, we introduce the roles played by emotions and emotional regulation in the workplace and discuss their implications for HRM. We do so by considering five levels of analysis: (1) within-person temporal variations, (2) between persons (individual differences), (3) interpersonal processes; (4) groups and teams, and (5) the organization as a whole. We focus especially on processes of emotional regulation in both self and others, including discussion of emotional labor and emotional intelligence. In the opening sections of the chapter, we discuss the nature of emotions and emotional regulation from an OB perspective by introducing the five-level model, and explaining in particular how emotions and emotional regulation play a role at each of the levels. We then apply these ideas to four major domains of concern to HR managers: (1) recruitment, selection, and socialization; (2) performance management; (3) training and development; and (4) compensation and benefits. In concluding, we stress the interconnectedness of emotions and emotional regulation across the five levels of the model, arguing that emotions and emotional regulation at each level can influence effects at other levels, ultimately culminating in the organization’s affective climate.

Organizational change is endemic and can be disruptive for leaders' emotions and subsequent behaviors. While many studies focus on employees' reactions to change, there are few that focus on leader responses to change. The focus of our study is on leaders. In this chapter, we outline a qualitative study examining a leader's emotion regulation during organizational change. The aim of our research is to better understand the emotions leaders experience during organizational change and what emotion regulation strategies they enact to support positive outcomes.

Data were collected through interviews with 25 middle and senior management who were involved in organizational change at the time of interviews. The day reconstruction method was used to evoke and more accurately capture leaders' memories of an emerging or actual change event, the emotions they experienced, and the emotional regulation strategies utilized. Conceptualizing the change as a disruptive affective event, we asked participants to recall scenarios related to the change that triggered an emotional response and drew on the process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998a) to interpret these data. To round off the interviews, we captured the leader's personal outcomes from the emotion regulation strategies enacted.

Based on the data, leaders managing organizational change processes described the experience as a series of disruptive affective events that were more often associated with experiences of negatively valanced emotions (compared to positive emotions). Further, leaders were most likely to respond to these affective disruptions with the specific emotion regulation strategy of suppression (i.e., masking negative feelings with neutral or positive affective displays). A major reason leaders report responding with suppression is to maintain their professionalism, even if this undermines their health and well-being.

Qualitative research seeking to understand a leader's emotion experiences during organizational change is rare. These findings provide a more nuanced understanding of the affective nature of leaders' experiences and responses when managing the disruptive processes of change. This knowledge can assist organizations to develop processes and tools to support leaders dealing with the emotional realities of change to enable better outcomes for themselves and their followers.

It is well recognized that emotions support adaptation to environmental demands by guiding cognitions and behavior in line with one’s implicit and explicit goals. This is true in the work context, as in other areas of life. Traditionally, however, research into emotion regulation within the work context has been centered on the problematic aspects of feeling and displaying emotion at work. In order to meet organizational goals, felt emotions need to be subdued or modified, and inauthentic emotions displayed. In this way, conceptualizations of work-related emotion regulation have disconnected emotion from its most basic and adaptive signal function. This disconnection has led to a dilemma regarding the real- and the fake-self and been associated with a range of negative consequences for employee health and well-being. Understanding how emotions can be regulated to help employees meet personal goals for growth and development has also been overlooked. In this chapter, we challenge this existing paradigm, and instead argue that examining emotion regulation in terms of its adaptive functions will help to unify disparate findings from within the emotion regulation literature and progress research in the field of emotion and emotion regulation at work.

Researchers in the field of occupational stress and well-being are increasingly interested in the role of emotion regulation in the work context. Emotion regulation has also been widely investigated in the area of lifespan developmental psychology, with findings indicating that the ability to modify one’s emotions represents a domain in which age-related growth is possible. In this chapter, we integrate the literatures on aging, emotion regulation, and occupational stress and well-being. To this end, we review key theories and empirical findings in each of these areas, summarize existing research on age, emotion regulation, and stress and well-being at work, and develop a conceptual model on how aging affects emotion regulation and the stress process in work settings to guide future research. According to the model, age will affect (1) what kinds of affective work events are encountered and how often, (2) the appraisal of and initial emotional response to affective work events (emotion generation), and (3) the management of emotions and coping with affective work events (emotion regulation). The model has implications for researchers and practitioners who want to understand and facilitate successful emotion regulation and stress reduction in the workplace among different age groups.

The aim of this paper was to investigate the role of emotion regulation and age in reactions to psychological contract breach towards positive and negative affect. The authors expected that in the context of contract breach, reappraisal emotion regulation mitigate the negative relation with affect. Moreover, based on lifespan theory, suppression emotion regulation was expected to be important for younger workers, because older workers have learned how to express themselves appropriately at the workplace. Consequently, suppression would mitigate the relations of contract breach with well‐being only among younger workers, while it strengthened the relation for older workers.

Data were collected among 163 employees working in various Dutch organizations. Moderated regression analyses were used to test the hypotheses.

Reappraisal mitigated the relation of contract breach with positive affect, and suppression mitigated the relations of contract breach with positive affect only among younger workers, while for older workers with high suppression the relations were accentuated. It was also found that contract breach was more strongly related to negative affect for younger workers than for older workers.

Reactions towards psychological contract breaches are influenced by the emotion regulation strategies people employ. Especially reappraisal is important to maintain optimal levels of affect, while suppression is detrimental especially for older workers.

This paper is the first study in which emotion regulation strategies are investigated in the context of psychological contract breaches. The paper presents novel insights into how reactions to contract breaches are modified through emotion regulation strategies and age.

Because our emotions are crucial determinants of how well we function in our personal and professional lives, researchers from different perspectives have sought to understand how emotions can be best managed for optimal functioning. In this chapter, we focus on two research traditions that have examined this issue, the emotion regulation (ER) tradition and the emotional labor (EL) tradition. This effort is predicated on the belief that a more fundamental research tradition such as ER can inform and complement a more applied research tradition such as EL, first by extending our understanding of the various processes by which employees deal with their emotions, and second, by permitting a more accurate prediction of the consequences of these emotions. A case is presented that discriminating more finely between the various emotion management strategies may help to resolve some of the paradoxical findings observed in the EL literature.

This paper aims to examine how ethical leadership alleviates knowledge contribution loafing among engineering designers through the mediating effect of knowledge-based psychological ownership and the moderating effect of emotion regulation strategies.

This study adopts a questionnaire survey to obtain 344 valid sample from engineering designers and uses partial least squares-structural equation modeling to analyze data.

The results demonstrate that ethical leadership is a key factor to alleviate knowledge contribution loafing. Knowledge-based psychological ownership is a main factor causing knowledge contribution loafing and mediates the influence of ethical leadership on knowledge contribution loafing. Furthermore, cognitive reappraisal (a response-focused emotion regulation strategy) moderates the relationship between ethical leadership and knowledge contribution loafing, and the effect of ethical leadership on knowledge contribution loafing is stronger when cognitive reappraisal is high.

Engineering design organizations may inspire ethical leadership and pay attention to psychological state of designers. Leaders may help designers overcome knowledge-based psychological ownership by the influence of ethical leadership. During the process of knowledge interaction, designers may adopt cognitive reappraisal strategy consciously.

This study addresses the knowledge gap that ethical leadership affects knowledge contribution loafing with knowledge-based psychological ownership as the intermediary. This study also advances the literature on leadership and emotion regulation and extends the scope of social learning theory in knowledge management domain through examining the moderate role of emotion regulation strategies.

In order to shed light on whether and how leaders should help manage group members' emotions related to intragroup conflict, the aim of this paper was to investigate the effects of several outcomes associated with two cognitive emotion regulation strategies, cognitive reappraisal and distraction, in the presence of two distinct types of conflict, relationship or task-oriented.

A 2×3 between subjects' experimental design was employed to investigate the influence of intragroup conflict and emotion regulations strategies on individual-level discrete emotions and group processes and outcomes.

Results suggest that emotion regulation plays an important role in moderating the negative consequences associated with relationships conflict. Specifically, distraction served a critical function to those in the relationship conflict conditions such that both cohesion levels and task performance levels were elevated when group members used distraction as a means of regulating emotions.

This study extends research in the area of emotion regulation into a group context and extends other research that suggests distraction may have potential as a means of regulating emotion. Long-term groups with experience in problem solving may have behaved in different ways than participants in this study.

Emotion regulation strategies have been studied only in an individual context. This study is particularly valuable in understanding how emotion regulation strategies work differentially when applied to multiple individuals in a shared setting. Additionally, it incorporates the use of distraction as a viable regulation strategy.