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Despite being a seminal explanation of the workforce emotional experiences, capable of mapping the path from the antecedents to consequences, affective events theory (AET) only offers a “macrostructure” of a working environment. To date, little is known about the universal features of the work environment that may guide the understanding of imperative work aspects triggering employees’ emotions at work. Hence, the study proposes and validates that Stafford Beer’s viable system model (VSM) can provide a holistic view of the organizational work environment, enabling a comprehensive understanding of work events or factors triggering workforce emotions.

First, the VSM structural layout is used to fill in the “macrostructure” of the “working environment” in AET to diagnose the functional and relational aspects of the work and the related work events occurring within. Using a deductive approach, 31 work events were adopted to determine the impact of VSM-based work environment events on the employees’ emotional experiences and subsequent work attitudes (job satisfaction) and behaviors (citizenship behavior). To field test the proposed nexus of VSM and AET, the survey was conducted on two hundred and fifteen employees from 39 different organizations. PLS-SEM tested the explanatory power of the suggested VSM’s systemic approach for understanding the affective work environment in totality.

The findings confirmed that the VSM metalanguage provides a holistic view of the organizational functioning and social connectivity disposing of affective work events, helpful in assessing their aggregate influence on employees’ emotions and work-related outcomes.

The findings identify how employees' emotions can be triggered by everyday work operations and social relations at work, which can affect their extra-role behaviors and necessary work-related attitudes.

The study utilized Beer’s VSM framework based on the systemic principle of “holistic view” for ascertaining the affective work environment and its related features holistically, which filled in well the macrostructure of “work environment features” with micro-structures of organizational inter-related aspects which are yet to be known in AET – a seminal explanation for managing workforce emotions.

COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of home-based teleworking globally. Coupled with this, there are rising concerns about workplace cyberbullying. However, less studies have explored workplace cyberbullying in non-western countries. The purpose of the current study is to examine whether workplace cyberbullying affects employees' intention to stay and to find out the mechanisms underlying the relationship.

Data were collected among Indian home-based teleworkers. Data were analysed using SmartPLS and SPSS-PROCESS macro.

Results show that workplace cyberbullying negatively impacts intention to stay and affective commitment acts as a mediator between this link. The results also reveal that workplace social capital moderates the negative effects of workplace cyberbullying on affective commitment. The results further confirm that workplace social capital moderated the indirect impact of workplace cyberbullying on intention to stay via affective commitment.

This study highlights the potential of leveraging workplace social capital in order to reduce the negative effects of workplace cyberbullying.

These findings can complement the previous studies on the impact of negative work events on affective commitment and intention to stay as well as extend researchers' understanding of the underlying mechanism between workplace cyberbullying and intention to stay. Furthermore, this research explains how employees can utilise social resources from workplace social capital to mitigate the negative outcomes of workplace cyberbullying.

We theorize the critical role of angel investors' affective experiences and first impressions in the context of entrepreneurial finance. We develop a model and propositions to illustrate why angel investors make the decision to continue screening, thus explaining why certain investment proposals make it, while others do not.

Drawing on affective events theory and the literature on affective experiences, we theorize how the perceptions of pitches that trigger positive or/and negative physiological arousal, short-lived emotions, and associated thoughts are different, thus allowing us to build new theory of how these different experiences can influence the outcome of the evaluation process in the initial screening stage.

Our model suggests that the initial evaluation unfolds in five stages: perception of an entrepreneurial pitch, physiological arousal, emotions, first impression, and a decision to continue screening. When different manifestations of physiological arousal and subsequent emotions set the tone of first impressions, they can be either a positive, negative, or mixed experience. While positive and mixed first impression can lead to selection, negative first impression can lead to rejection.

We illustrate what is of value for angel investors when they look for new investments, and why certain entrepreneurial pitches lead to the decision to continue screening, while others do not. We propose that what angel investors feel is particularly important in situations where they are not yet making the ultimate decision to invest money but are involved in decisions about whether to continue to spend time to investigate the investment proposal.

The existing literature on abusive supervision, defined as a perception by subordinates that their supervisor displays hostility toward them (but falling short of physical abuse), is deficient insofar as it fails to account for workgroup differences in employees' perceptions of abusive supervision. We therefore sought to study such differences, which refer to as “abusive supervision dispersion (ASD).”

We interviewed 40 employees from a variety of organizations in Australia, focusing on the role of affective events in ASD dynamics, with a view to understanding how this phenomenon relates to individual and team processes.

We found that ASD stimulates employees to harbor negative emotions and resentment toward their supervisor, causing them to perceive even positive events negatively. We found further that, while low ASD facilitates team-member exchange by forcing abused members to band together resulting in low team conflict, high dispersion facilitates formation of subgroups and high team conflict.

These findings illuminate the paradoxical nature of ASD and suggest that employees experience dispersion through three paradoxes: (1) dispersion paradox, (2) resentment paradox, and (3) team paradox. Overall, these findings suggest that subordinates' perceptions of high ASD are associated with detrimental impacts on team performance.

The purpose of the study is to explore novel antecedents to workplace envy. The authors explore the role of workplace ostracism (WO) as a contextual antecedent in triggering envy, as well as the mediating effects of metacognitive resources (MR) and dimensions of social perception (DSP) as cognitive antecedents. The authors integrate affective events theory, social comparison theory and schema theory to develop their arguments.

Using the survey approach, the authors recruited 490 professionals employed in Egypt and validated the proposed model and hypotheses in structural equation modelling (SEM).

The results show a significant relationship between WO and workplace envy. Additionally, metacognitive experiences (MEs) and warmth mediate the relationship among them.

By addressing how WO is a predictor of envy, this study is among the few to consider social-related events as predictors of envy. Additionally, the study is one of the first that has extended affective events theory to explore the role of an individual's cognition in generating envy.

Drawing on affective events theory, the purpose of this study is to examine the mediation effect of positive affect on the association between fit (e.g. person-organization fit and person-job fit) and organizational commitment in the hospitality industry. The secondary aim is to investigate the moderated mediation effect of hospitality employees’ calling on these associations.

The authors collected data from 248 hotel employees in China at three different time points. A moderated mediation model was examined by using the bias-corrected bootstrapping method.

Results revealed that person-organization fit and person-job fit indirectly influenced organizational commitment via positive affect. Calling was found to moderate the indirect influences of person-organization and person-job fit on organizational commitment via positive affect.

Managing employees’ affective experiences in the hospitality industry and promoting their organizational commitment are key strategies for hospitality organizations to promote service quality and retain their employees. This study suggests that hospitality organizations should actively attempt to improve employees’ fit perceptions and promote their sense of calling.

By theorizing and investigating the mediating role of positive affect and the moderating role of calling in the association between fit and employee commitment, this research extends existing knowledge on the association between fit–job attitudes and makes notable contributions to the hospitality literature on fit, affect, calling and job attitudes.

This study investigates the benefits of ethical leadership behaviors for leaders themselves and the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions of this effect.

Using a multi-time and multi-source survey design, data was collected from both leaders and subordinates across three waves.

Ethical leadership behavior was found to be positively associated with the leader’s moral pride, resulting in the leader’s higher in-role performance and perceived manager effectiveness. The effect of ethical leadership behavior was moderated by core self-evaluation (CSE), such that low-CSE leaders benefit more from these behaviors.

Organizations should encourage ethical leadership behaviors and educate leaders to develop moral pride from conducting these behaviors. Leaders with low CSEs can enhance their in-role performance and overall effectiveness by taking pride in their ethical leadership behaviors.

The field of study on ethical leadership has predominantly focused on the positive outcomes for recipients, yet it is imperative to examine the self-benefits for leaders as well. This study drew upon affective events theory to posit that ethical leadership behaviors generate moral pride in leaders, leading to improved work-related attitudes and performance outcomes.

People are more likely to participate in work-related events that might cause positive and negative affective reactions. Prior research linked coworker friendship with incivility; however, few studies investigated negative workplace gossip. Simultaneously, linking coworker friendship with incivility through positive/negative affective responses is lacking. As such, this paper aims to examine this relationship via the dual mediation effect of positive and negative workplace gossip.

A total of 398 subordinates at family restaurants in Greater Cairo were surveyed, and data was analyzed using SmartPLS4.

Coworker friendship significantly influences coworker incivility via positive and negative workplace gossip and other underlying mechanisms.

Managers should take the initiative to decrease gossip by sharing information promptly and thoroughly and establishing effective channels for information exchange. In the case of an informal plan, restaurant managers may seek to create a welcoming and motivating corporate atmosphere and cultivate social ties among subordinates to prevent the creation of negative gossip. Restaurant managers should give victims of negative gossip timely psychological counseling.

This paper contributes to the restaurant literature on affective emotional responses to coworkers’ judgment-driven behavior from new perspectives.

This study aims to contribute novel insights into understanding and mitigating the harmful consequences of abusive supervision (AS) by examining the association between AS experiences, revenge, forgiveness, and the moderating role of emotional intelligence (EI). The key argument is that employees' EI can influence the AS experience through affective processes, countering supervisors' abusive behaviors.

A between-person scenario-based experiment was conducted with 366 participants divided into AS and control groups. The study explored the association between AS experience and revenge/forgiveness, mediated by core affect (valence and activation). EI abilities were measured as a moderator. Data analysis examined the relationships and interactions among AS, revenge/forgiveness, EI, and affective experiences.

The study reveals significant findings indicating that AS experiences were positively associated with revenge and negatively associated with forgiveness. The mediation analysis confirmed the role of core affect in these relationships. EI emerged as a moderator, shaping the association between AS experiences and revenge/forgiveness. Importantly, participants with higher EI exhibited lower revenge intentions, demonstrating the potential of EI to mitigate the adverse effects of AS. Unexpectedly, individuals with high EI also expressed fewer forgiveness intentions.

This study provides a comprehensive understanding of how employees can effectively counterbalance the impact of AS through higher levels of strategic EI. Examining core affect as a mediator offers novel insights into coping mechanisms in response to AS experiences and their consequences.

The study acknowledges several limitations, as the scenarios may only partially capture the complexities of real-life AS situations. The focus on a specific context and the sample characteristics limit the generalizability of the findings. Future research should explore diverse organizational contexts and employ longitudinal designs.

The findings have practical implications for organizations as enhancing employees' EI skills through training programs interventions and integrating EI into organizational culture and leadership conduct.

This paper highlights the effects of supervisor bullying (SBL) on work–family conflict (WFC), employee voice behavior (EVB), working compulsively (WCO) and working excessively (WEX), as well as the effects of WFC, EVB and WEX on employees' sleeping problems.

Data were gathered from 473 five-star hotel employees, and their responses were analyzed using AMOS v.23.

SBL significantly lowers EVB while significantly increasing WFC. SBL increases WEX and WCO levels, which may be considered a short-term positive outcome of SBL.

This paper will help improve understanding of employee reactions to an emotionally charged workplace occurrence.