Not logged in.

Contribution Details

Type Journal Article
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Group emotions: Cutting the Gordian knots concerning terms, levels of analysis, and processes
Organization Unit
  • Contribution from another University/Organization than University of Zurich
Authors
  • Jochen Menges
  • Martin Kilduff
Item Subtype Original Work
Refereed Yes
Status Published in final form
Language
  • English
Journal Title The Academy of Management Annals
Publisher Taylor & Francis
Geographical Reach international
ISSN 1941-6520
Volume 9
Number 1
Page Range 845 - 928
Date 2015
Abstract Text Research has established that groups are pervaded by feelings. But group emotion research within organizational science has suffered in recent years from a lack of terminological clarity, from a narrow focus on small groups, and from an overemphasis on micro-processes of emotion transmission. We address those problems by reviewing and systematically integrating relevant work conducted not only in organizational science, but also in psychology and sociology. We offer a definition of group emotions and sort the conceptual space along four dimensions: group emotion responses, recognition, regulation, and reiteration. We provide evidence that group emotions occur at all levels of analysis, including levels beyond small work groups. The accounts of group emotion emergence at higher levels of analysis differ substantially between organizational science, psychology, and sociology. We review these accounts - emergence through inclination, interaction, institutionalization, or identification - and then synthesize them into one parsimonious model. The consequences of different group emotions are reviewed and further constructs (including emotional aperture, group emotional intelligence, emotional culture, and emotional climate) are discussed. We end with a call for future research on several neglected group emotion topics including the study of discrete shared emotions, emotions at multiple levels, the effects of social network patterns, and effects on group functioning.
Related URLs
Digital Object Identifier 10.1080/19416520.2015.1033148
Other Identification Number merlin-id:17515
Export BibTeX