Presentation to Melbourne's Knowledge Management Community #kmlf 15 June 2011

1. Managing knowledge we
don’t want
Emotion in Organisations
Melbourne KMLF 15 June 2011
Annette Clancy & Ian Miller
www.inter-actions.biz
Wednesday 15 June 2011

2. ..in work organisations we have become
all too familiar with the idea that
‘rationality’ along with its close cousin,
‘efficiency'’ is the sensible ‘good guy’. In
the shadows it seems there lurks a
perceived alternative or dichotomous
bad guy called ‘emotion’ or ‘emotionality’
Adrian Carr 1999
Wednesday 15 June 2011
Adrian Carr- University of Western Sydney

3. ‘..the more bureaucracy is dehumanized the
more completely it succeeds in eliminating
from official business love, hatred and all
purely personal, irrational and emotional
elements which escape calculation. This is
the specific nature of bureaucracy and it is
appraised as its special value’
Max Weber, 1946
Wednesday 15 June 2011

4. emotion at work
assumptions?
Wednesday 15 June 2011
What are your assumptions about emotion at work?

5. Text
Wednesday 15 June 2011
A review of the literature & my own research reveals the following....
Emotion is considered either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (mainly bad....)

6. Leave at the door
Personal
Text
Unpredictable
Out of control
Irrational ‘managed’
Wednesday 15 June 2011
A review of the literature & my own research reveals the following....
Emotion is considered either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (mainly bad....)

7. Wednesday 15 June 2011
Emotion research goes in 2 directions
Good - job satisfaction, job performance
Bad - workplace stress
How has the research been turned into practice in organisations?

8. Emotion engineering
Wednesday 15 June 2011
The management & control of emotion
Going to mention some processes which inform work with emotion

9. Emotional
Labour
Wednesday 15 June 2011
Arlie Hochschild - The managed heart 1983
Service industries, fast food and airline workers
We have 2 jobs - the work we are hired to do and the management of our own emotions to
perform a prescribed emotion required for the doing of the task
What is the impact if the internal & external requirements are not aligned?

10. Smile industries
Control of employees’
emotion for commercial
gain
Emotional
Labour
‘Inside-out’ smile
‘Fake it till you
make it’
Emotional labourers
Wednesday 15 June 2011
Arlie Hochschild - The managed heart 1983
Service industries, fast food and airline workers
We have 2 jobs - the work we are hired to do and the management of our own emotions to
perform a prescribed emotion required for the doing of the task
What is the impact if the internal & external requirements are not aligned?

11. Wednesday 15 June 2011
Positive Psychology - only 15 years old
Seligman - alternative to perceived ‘negativity’ of psychoanalysis & psychology
There are positive & negative emotions & it is possible to separate them
Good feelings have positive consequences - Organisational harmony, strength, fairness,
wisdom
Advances the idea of good & bad - questionable - is it ever good to get angry?

12. Emotional Intelligence
‘An optimistic route to
optimistic outcomes’
Fineman, 2006
Wednesday 15 June 2011
Daniel Goleman mid 90s -methodology for predicting outstanding performance
Leaders possessing high EI are said to be charasmatic, adept at injecting positive feelings
such as excitement, enthusiasm & optimism into work
Places a value on particular types of emotional competence & disputes value of others
Attempt to quantify & cognitise emotion
Reviews as to impact and effectiveness are mixed

13. What do we see?
Wednesday 15 June 2011
Moral Agenda
Emotion is a core part of the political process of organising & control
Organisations now want & are given access to our external as well as internal lives
Emotion is ‘safe’ if cognitised & controlled

14. Disappointment
When an expected positive outcome does not
materialise
Wednesday 15 June 2011
Everybody has a story
Hidden and under researched in literature - Hidden in organisations
Framed as failure - of the individual or the organisation
Located within individuals
Perceived to be personal & unrelated to the environment in which it is generated

15. emotion rules?
Wednesday 15 June 2011
What does D tell us about emotion rules?
A lot of work goes into hiding the public display of emotion
From a psychoanalytic perspective we might ask why we spend so much time hiding
something we think has no value - why is disappointment so dangerous?

16. emotion rules?
We don’t talk about failure
Wednesday 15 June 2011
What does D tell us about emotion rules?
A lot of work goes into hiding the public display of emotion
From a psychoanalytic perspective we might ask why we spend so much time hiding
something we think has no value - why is disappointment so dangerous?

17. emotion rules?
We don’t talk about failure
Public stories are positive
Wednesday 15 June 2011
What does D tell us about emotion rules?
A lot of work goes into hiding the public display of emotion
From a psychoanalytic perspective we might ask why we spend so much time hiding
something we think has no value - why is disappointment so dangerous?

18. emotion rules?
We don’t talk about failure
Public stories are positive
Personal stories are negative
Wednesday 15 June 2011
What does D tell us about emotion rules?
A lot of work goes into hiding the public display of emotion
From a psychoanalytic perspective we might ask why we spend so much time hiding
something we think has no value - why is disappointment so dangerous?

19. emotion rules?
We don’t talk about failure
Public stories are positive
Personal stories are negative
Disappointment might be contagious
Wednesday 15 June 2011
What does D tell us about emotion rules?
A lot of work goes into hiding the public display of emotion
From a psychoanalytic perspective we might ask why we spend so much time hiding
something we think has no value - why is disappointment so dangerous?

20. emotion rules?
We don’t talk about failure
Public stories are positive
Personal stories are negative
Disappointment might be contagious
Disappointment is a ‘bad’ thing
Wednesday 15 June 2011
What does D tell us about emotion rules?
A lot of work goes into hiding the public display of emotion
From a psychoanalytic perspective we might ask why we spend so much time hiding
something we think has no value - why is disappointment so dangerous?

21. emotion rules?
We don’t talk about failure
Public stories are positive
Personal stories are negative
Disappointment might be contagious
Disappointment is a ‘bad’ thing
Useful if it’s personal
Wednesday 15 June 2011
What does D tell us about emotion rules?
A lot of work goes into hiding the public display of emotion
From a psychoanalytic perspective we might ask why we spend so much time hiding
something we think has no value - why is disappointment so dangerous?

22. System?
Wednesday 15 June 2011
What does D tell us about organisational systems?

23. System?
Emotion is personal & public
at the same time
Wednesday 15 June 2011
What does D tell us about organisational systems?

24. System?
Emotion is personal & public
at the same time
Individuals do ‘work’ on
behalf of the system
Wednesday 15 June 2011
What does D tell us about organisational systems?

25. System?
Emotion is personal & public
at the same time
Individuals do ‘work’ on
behalf of the system
Individuals protect the
fantasy of the
organisation ‘ideal’
Wednesday 15 June 2011
What does D tell us about organisational systems?

26. System?
Emotion is personal & public
at the same time
Individuals do ‘work’ on
behalf of the system
Individuals protect the
fantasy of the
organisation ‘ideal’
Contain ‘failure’ ‘badness’ -
the scapegoat
Wednesday 15 June 2011
What does D tell us about organisational systems?

27. System?
Emotion is personal & public
at the same time
Individuals do ‘work’ on
behalf of the system
Individuals protect the
fantasy of the
organisation ‘ideal’
Politics of blame
Contain ‘failure’ ‘badness’ -
the scapegoat
Wednesday 15 June 2011
What does D tell us about organisational systems?

28. What might happen if?
Wednesday 15 June 2011
So - let’s re-imagine emotion at work ....

29. What might happen if?
Leaders felt empowered to express emotion?
We suspended moral judgement?
Orgs were real & not idealised?
Relationship management was
everybody’s business?
We viewed emotion as a source of
systemic intelligence?
Wednesday 15 June 2011
So - let’s re-imagine emotion at work ....

30. References
CARR, A. 1999. The Psychodynamics of
Organisation Change - Identity and the
"Reading'' of Emotion and Emotionality in a
Process of Change. Journal of Managerial
Psychology, 14, 673-585.
FINEMAN, S. 2006. On Being Positive: Concerns
and Counterpoints. Academy of Management
Review, 31, 270-291.
GOLEMAN, D. 1995. Emotional Intelligence:Why it
Can Matter More than IQ, New York, Bantam
Books.
HOCHSCHILD, A. R. 1983. The Managed Heart,
Berkley, University of California Press.
SELIGMAN, M. E. P., STEEN, T. A., PARK, N. &
PETERSON, C. 2005. Positive Psychology
Progress - Empirical Validation of
Interventions. American Psychologist, 60,
410-421.
WEBER, M. 1946. From Max Weber: Essays in
Sociology, New York, Oxford University
Press.
Wednesday 15 June 2011