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With a basis in affective events theory, this study aims to investigate the mediating role of anger in the relationship between employees’ exposure to workplace bullying and their engagement in deviant behaviours, as well as the invigorating role of their neuroticism in this process.

Three-wave, time-lagged data were collected from employees and their peers in a sample of Pakistani organizations.

Workplace bullying spurs interpersonal and organizational deviance because it prompts feelings of anger in employees. This mechanism is more prominent among employees with high levels of neuroticism.

This study reveals that the experience of anger is a key feature by which bullying behaviours steer employees towards counterproductive work behaviours, and this harmful process is more likely to escalate when employees’ personality makes them more vulnerable to emotional distress.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how job engagement affects the experience of workplace aggression and the related outcomes. Job engagement is introduced as a context variable for the stressor-strain model to explain differences for targets of workplace aggression.

A survey was conducted with a sample of 492 North American working adults from a large variety of industries and jobs.

Consistent with the hypotheses, fear and anger mediate the relationship between workplace aggression and strain. Job engagement moderated the relationship between workplace aggression and anger, such that aggression related to anger only for those employees who were engaged in their job. These data are consistent with the suggestion that engagement may create vulnerability for employees.

In this study, the authors highlight the need to include contextual factors that may explain differences in impact of workplace aggression and employee wellness.

While practitioners may seek to increase job engagement, there appears to be a greater cost should there be workplace aggression. Thus, the key implication for practitioners is the importance of prevention of workplace aggression.

With this study, the authors illustrate how job engagement may have a “dark side” for individuals. While previous research has shown that job engagement helps protect employee wellness, others show engagement decreases after incidents of workplace aggression. The authors suggest those who are engaged and targeted will experience worse outcomes. Also, the authors examine the role of anger for targets of workplace aggression as it relates to fear and strain in this study.

This chapter examines aggression at work perpetrated by individual insiders by bringing together streams of research that have often been examined separately. A comparison of the similarities and differences of aggression toward individuals, such as verbal abuse or physical attack, and aggression toward organizations, such as embezzlement or work slowdowns, is shown to provide important insights about the causes and consequences of workplace aggression. We propose a comprehensive model based on the integration of prior theoretical treatments and empirical findings. The model attempts to offer a framework to systematically examine psychological and organizational mechanisms underlying workplace aggression, and to explain the reasons why workplace violence policies and procedures sometimes fail. A set of research propositions is also suggested to assist in achieving this end in future research.

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.

Although researchers have suggested that aggression is multiply determined, most studies examine only a small set of predictors, focusing on either situational or individual or reciprocal motives. Research has not studied extensively the relative strength of multiple antecedent sets. Using questionnaire data (n = 366), the current study examines eleven antecedents of employees engaging in aggression: situational antecedents (i.e., procedural, distributive, and interpersonal justice; organizational, work group, and job related stress), individual difference antecedents (i.e., Type A behavior, trait anger, reactions to anger), and reciprocal effects (i.e., being the target of aggression). Individual difference antecedents and being the target of aggression influence the frequency with which employees report engaging in aggression. Situational antecedents are not significant predictors once other antecedents are taken into account.

Purpose: In this chapter, we develop a conceptual model, the relational anger model (RAM). The model aims to better understand the receivers' attributions and emotion regulation strategies used in the face of intense workplace anger. We also report a test of this model in a workplace setting. Study Design/Methodology/Approach: The data were collected through a survey using a split administration design conducted in various industries. The analysis used PROCESS based on data gathered from 122 employees. Findings: The results indicated that perceptions of greater anger intensity are associated with lower target positive health (e.g., lowered work functionality). When attributions of higher sender anger intensity are viewed as appropriate, targets experience better health outcomes. Targets' attribution of lower sender anger intensity appropriateness is also associated with targets' reporting higher negative health outcomes (e.g., lowered self-esteem). Support for the full moderated mediation model of the effects of the ER strategies is not found. However, separate paths within the model are significant as outlined in the analysis throughout this chapter. Originality/Value: Overall, the RAM increases our understanding of a receivers' internal cognitive and affective processes in the face of workplace anger manifestations in organizations. Research Limitations: There is a possibility of common method variance affecting the study results, but a split administration design was used to minimize this effect. The study may also be affected by memory of the anger incident, which we tried to overcome using the Day Reconstruction Method.

The malicious impulse is a phenomenon that lies in the theoretical and ontological space between emotion and action. In this chapter, we probe this space. In the empirical part of this work, we evaluate the hypothesis that middle-level supervisors will be more likely than non-supervisory workers and top-level supervisors to report an impulse to “hurt someone you work with” (i.e., maliciousness).

Data are from a cross-sectional survey of a representative sample of employed Toronto residents in 2004–2005.

Results from logistic regression analyses show that when job characteristics are controlled, the estimated difference between middle-level supervisors and workers in other hierarchical positions reporting the impulse to harm a coworker is statistically significant. Moreover, the difference between middle-level supervisors and other workers persist after controls for anger about work and job-related stress.

In discussing our results, we focus on factors that might generate the observed associations, and on how Bourdieusian theory may be used to interpret the social patterning of impulses in general, and malicious impulses in particular. We also discuss the implications of our findings for emotional intelligence in the workplace.

Excessive anger at work has a negative impact on the worker expressing anger and on those around them. The aim of our study is to identify anger triggers, reactions, and strategies for workers referred to an anger management intervention program. We interviewed 20 participants prior to the start of that program. Main causes of anger reported were unfair treatment, workplace incompetence, disregard by others, and concern for the bottom line. Anger reactions were aggressive acts and anger suppression. The two main strategies reported for dealing with anger were “no identifiable strategy” and distancing. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

This study is a preliminary effort to examine “muted anger” in the workplace. Muted anger is a unique interpersonal and organizational phenomenon, incorporated in the Dual Threshold Model (DTM) of workplace anger (Geddes & Callister, 2007). Characterized as a form of suppressed workplace anger, muted anger occurs when angry organizational members intentionally keep their anger hidden from management and those responsible for the problematic situation, and instead express their emotions to colleagues (and others) unrelated to the initial anger-provoking incident. Using the DTM framework, we surveyed 296 full-time employees regarding their experience with an angry colleague who vented to them after an infuriating event. Our findings indicate that whether or not muted anger episodes can lead to productive communication practices depends on the anger intensity of both the actor and the sympathetic responder as well as the responder's level of organizational commitment. Those who themselves felt moderate anger intensity after hearing their colleague's plight and those with high organizational commitment were more likely to advocate on behalf of their angry colleague and approach management or someone in a responsible position to help address the problematic situation. Those with lower anger intensity and organizational commitment typically discussed the situation with one or two additional, but unrelated persons – expanding the muted anger episode.

This study aims to explore the causes, characteristics and consequences of workplace anger expression and suppression, with an additional aim of testing the emotional dimension of Affective Events Theory.

Participants (n = 187) from management and non-management positions completed an event-contingent anger diary over a period of four working weeks, alongside measures on trait anger and job satisfaction.

Over 50 per cent of the sample disclosed anger-causing events. In keeping with Affective Events Theory, disposition was important, with trait anger higher in those disclosing anger-causing events. There appeared a range of factors predicting the expression of anger, with these focused primarily on individual issues and pre-existing emotion rather than work characteristics.

Through consideration of management and non-management workers and by using a longitudinal design, the study highlights the importance of individual factors in understanding workplace anger. It notes the value in focusing on discrete emotion. The findings offer a clear direction for future research that could assist with enhancing models of workplace emotion, particularly if the aim is to account for discrete emotions.