Impact of Emotions on

Organizational Innovation

Course: …………………. Organizational Theory MGT-678

Submitted to: …………… Dr. Mohammad Yasir

Submitted by: ……………Abdul Hadi Nabizada

Roll No: …………………...6012-2012

Date of Submission: ……. Feb-15-2021

Name of Department: …… MANANGEMENT SCIENCES, HAZARA UNIVERSITY

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Contents

Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 2

Literature review........................................................................................................................................... 3

Innovation ..................................................................................................................................................... 3

Importance of Innovation ......................................................................................................................... 4

Emotions ....................................................................................................................................................... 4

Kinds of Emotions ..................................................................................................................................... 5

Emotions & Innovation ................................................................................................................................. 7

Discussion...................................................................................................................................................... 8

Findings ..................................................................................................................................................... 8

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 13

References .................................................................................................................................................. 14
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Introduction

Impact of emotions on organizational innovation is important for each organization to be

considered and followed for the betterment of an organization to keep the current market share and
gain high market share for the products and services of the company in the current mostly
competitive national and international markets.

This article defined and explained innovation, emotions and the relationship between them by
following review of various similar articles, journals, thesis and books online and offline.
Generally, Emotions are considered as a variable in this article to study the effects of each emotion
on creativity and innovation of an organization. Emotions are categorized in different type like
positive and negative emotions, controllable and uncontrollable emotions, internal and external
emotions. Emotions are like (fear, joy, surprise, love, anger sadness, hope, anxiety, happiness,
pride, shame, guilty…). The relationship between emotions and innovation is one of the most
fascinating and puzzling in organizational behavior because some negative emotions like fear or
anger may cause good innovation in organization but it is so rare but it can be well managed by
CEO or BoD of any organization. But commonly the relationship between emotions and
innovation are direct, I mean positive and good emotions have positive effects on innovation and
negative and bad emotions have negative effects on innovation.

It is a qualitative based research as mentioned above various sources are sued for collecting the
data. In the research of this paper the relationship between emotions and innovation is considered
commonly and basically each emotion is explained simply with effects on innovation and
creativity of the organization. But it is suggested to study the impact of each emotion deeply to
find the correlation between the emotion and innovation and creativity for further development of
employee and organization. Each emotion should be supposed separately as a variable and firstly
data should have collected through interviews, focus groups and questionnaires as a primary data
to evaluate the promotion of the organization.

Emotions and innovation are uncountable and intangible phenomenon so mostly the researches
and articles related to this topic are qualitative, but the consequences and results of them can be
quantitative and countable as a quantity of products, services and income.
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Literature review

Innovation
Any new and fresh solution to a problem that organization faces is called innovation or
innovation is the generation, acceptance, implementation of new ideas, processes, products or
services. (Cumming & Connell, 1978). To gain the high market share, it is important to have a
comprehensive plan and strategy for innovation of organizations’ products or services.

The concept of innovation is another cornerstone or foundation in modern national and

international marketing strategy and planning because in today’s mostly competitive markets
environment; many senior and expert CEOs and managers have become more and more concerned
with the need to be first, fast, and on-time (Wong, 2002).

Conceptually innovation and creativity have also been developed from two point of view or
perspectives. The first perspective or the first point of view defines and illustrate innovation as a
modern technology, management tool, planning or strategy used by the company for the first time,
whether used previously by other companies or not (or as a redesigning of or significant
improvement to a process) (Nord and Tucker, 1987; Tornatzky and Fleischer, 1990). From this
perspective, an innovation implies aspects concerning the dispersion of such innovation among
nations, industries and companies (Haiyang and Kwaku, 2001), and thus forms part of the
traditional theory of innovation dispersion (Prescott and Slyke, 1997).

The second perspective defines and describes innovation as-new product development (Myers and
Marquis, 1969). Reference is made to the influence and effects that company structure, staff or
personnel and processes exercise on new product development and commercialization (Haiyang
and Kwaku, 2001). It is possible to extend the concept of innovation in product manufacture and
commercialization and distinguish two further levels of innovation: (1) Project level, which
examines and evaluate all the processes required to conceive, design, produce and distribute a
product for the market (Myers and Marquis, 1969; Haiyang and Kwaku, 2001). (2) Company or
strategic unit level, which looks at product innovations in terms of company competitive strategy
(Haiyang and Kwaku, 2001).
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Importance of Innovation
Each organization needs to progress and adjust itself competitively with other
organizations of the country, region or worldwide. So the main source of growth is innovation for
each organization. And sustaining or maintaining innovation is not easy and innovation is not a
single job but it is multifaceted and sophisticated job for an organization. (Bartel & Garud, 2009).
Creativity and innovation is the life of an organization but needs to be more considered in each
part of the organization with best coordination and cooperation of all stakeholders.

If we consider the last decades of this century, most of organization focused on creativity and
innovation to compete well in the market and to anticipate the change in future. Each change can
be involved in innovation but each innovation cannot be involved in change.

Emotions
According to psychology & medical , emotion is mostly describe as a complex and
sophisticated state of feeling that results in physical and psychological changes that influence and
effect thoughts and behaviors. Emotionality is associated and aligned with a range of psychological
phenomena, including mood, personality, temperament, and motivation. According to author
David G. Myers, human emotion involves "...physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and
conscious experience”.

Whereas most studies on emotions, innovations and changes focused on a limited group of
negative emotions related to resistance, Kiefer’s (2002) investigation of Swiss service sector
human resource managers (HRM) during a merger or combining showed a wide variety of
experienced positive emotions (including joy, hope, satisfaction, surprise, pride and relief) as well
as negative emotions (such as anger, fear, frustration, disappointment and restlessness).
Considering and following both the relational themes (Lazarus, 1991) alligned with specific
emotions as well as the action tendencies engendered by them (Frijda, 1986), Kiefer identified
certain consequences and results of joy, anger and fear that imply various levels of initiative and
innovative behavior and attitudes. Her application of the models by Lazarus and Frijda represents
a theoretical foundation or base for empirical research on the impact of discrete and seprate
emotions on these outcomes. Kiefer’s (2002) findings suggest that joy, which reflects progress
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toward an objective (Lazarus, 1991) and typically leads to exuberance and action preparedness
(Frijda, 1986), was necessary for sustained levels of active support for change initiatives, which
reflects the persistence facet of personal initiative (Frese & Fay, 2001). On the contrary, fear
frequently led to the avoidance and inhibition tendencies suggested by Frijda, as reflected and
showed in managers’ resulting reluctance to speak up or blame the process, which reflects low
levels of initiative. The consequences and results of anger were particularly multifaceted and
complicated, because various respondents reported the two antagonistic or contending action
tendencies suggested by Frijda (i.e., terminating obstacles or showing resistance). Whereas the
first reaction implies a high level of organizationally functional initiative, the second reaction may
lead to low levels of productive initiative.

As above study mentioned the kinds of emotions so according to their distribution emotions have
direct positive and negative effects on organization development, creativity and innovation.

Kinds of Emotions
As mentioned in above researches that emotions have positive and negative effects on
organization innovation. Scholars divided emotions into various kinds and types and they have
discussed the relation among emotion, attitudes and behaviors.

So, what is the connection between emotions, attitudes, and behaviors at work? This connection
may be explained and described using a theory named Affective Events Theory (AET).
Researchers Howard Weiss and Russell Cropanzano studied the effect of six large types of
emotions in the workplace: anger, fear, joy, love, sadness, and surprise (Weiss & Cropanzano,
1996). Their theory indicates that specific events on the job cause different kinds of people to feel
different emotions. These emotions, in turn, inspire actions that can benefit or impede others at
work (Fisher, 2002).
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According to Affective Events Theory, six emotions are affected by events at work.

For example, imagine that a colleague unexpectedly brings your morning coffee or tea to your
desk. As a result of this happiness, if unanticipated experience, you may feel joy and surprised. If
that colleague is your boss, manager or CEO, you might feel proud too. The finding of the study
is that the positive feelings resulting from duty experience may inspire you to do something you
hadn’t planned to do before. For instance, you might volunteer to help a colleague on a project you
weren’t planning to work on before or think more about the betterment organization. Your reaction
would be an affect-driven behavior (Fisher, 2002). In the other hand Alternatively, if you were
unfairly reprimanded by your manager, the negative emotions you practice may cause you to take
out from work or to act mean and sad toward a colleague. Over time, these tiny instants of emotion
on the job will have effect and can influence a person’s job satisfaction. Although company
incentives and promotions can pay to a person’s happiness at work, gratification is not simply a
result of this kind of “outside-in” reward system or prize system. Job satisfaction in the AET model
comes from the inside-in—from the mixture of an individual’s personality, small emotional
experiences at work over time, beliefs, and affect-driven behaviors.

Jobs and duties that are high in negative emotion can lead to frustration and burnout—an ongoing
negative emotional state resulting from frustration (Lee & Ashforth, 1996; Maslach, 1982;
Maslach & Jackson, 1981). Depression, physical illness, anxiety, anger, increased drug and alcohol
use, and sleeplessness can result from frustration and exhaustion, with frustration being somewhat
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more active and burnout more passive. The effects of both circumstances can influence colleagues,
customers, and clients as anger boils over and is stated in one’s connections with others
(Lewandowski, 2003).

Emotions & Innovation

The creator of the whole universe created human being with a complicated system of
tangible and intangible parts of the body. Allah almighty is the creator of all creatures and human
is one of them, human runs the whole world and keep maintains all the systems. Beside all other
parts, systems, characteristics… emotions also play the major rule inside the human.

According to the above studies emotions have direct effect on organization innovation, as
explained above that emotions have various types, positive and negative or good emotions and bad
emotions. Good emotions like intelligence, proud, happiness and others motivate an employee to
work hard and honestly to gain organizational goals. The good reputation of an organization is
proudness for employee and it persuade the emotions of an employee. Finally, the above studies
and researches prove that emotions can play a major rule in innovation of an organization.
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Discussion

Findings

L. Cuming and Connell worked on organizational innovation and they discussed some
external and internal resources for innovation. The variables for the study was technology,
environment, goals and structure. They also integrated the approaches of other researches with
their study under a model under the name of Conceptual model. But unfortunately they didn’t
mention emotions and the impact of emotions or organizational innovation.

Creativity Model

Higgins, Qualls and Couger (1992) presented a model regarding to creativity, proposing
effects and influences of five separated emotions (anxiety, depression, anger, exhilaration and
passion) on the four creativity phases preparation, incubation, illumination and verification.
Interestingly, Higgins and coauthors described mainly negative effects of all of these emotions.
Specifically, they discussed that all five emotions may cause an individual to be unable to focus
on the task in the preparation stage, when the problem needs to be systematically analyzed, or to
involve in uninhibited information combination during the incubation stage. In the illumination
stage, in which the “Eureka” is acknowledged, individuals experiencing negative emotions such
as anxiety may devaluate the insight, whereas those experiencing positive emotions such as
excitement may overvalue it. Fascinatingly, Higgins and colleagues claimed that this influence
“is particularly worrying for the organization because many ‘good ideas’ may be missed and other
weaker ideas might receive unbalanced organizational consideration” (p. 125). Finally, all of the
five emotions may limit one’s ability to systematically analyze the value of the idea in the
verification stage, which may sometimes lead to sponsorship of weak ideas or rejection of
prematurely presented good ideas. Empirical studies testing these assumptions would be a
beneficial addition to the literature, mainly because this model propose reasons for harmful effects
of both positive and negative emotions on creativity and innovation, whereas most published
studies and researches have dealt with beneficial effects of positive or negative affect (Amabile et
al., 2005; George & Zhou, 2002; Isen et al., 1987; Madjar et al., 2002). The influences of positive
and negative affect in over-all as well as separate emotions in particular on specific creativity
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stages deserve further attention. Though the model by Higgins and coauthors (1992) is based on
the original four-stage model by Wallace (1926), these four stages are highly similar to the four
phases included in Amabile’s (1996) more recent non-sequential phase or stage model, which
founds a part of her componential theory of creativity and innovation. Anxiety or fear has also
been suggested as a cause why brainstorming in groups directs to the generation of fewer and less
creative and innovative ideas than the use of the nominal group technique, which needs individuals
to work individually. For example, Thompson (2003) noted that members of brainstorming groups
“may be careful about their demonstration of ideas and suggestions because they fear that others
may negatively assess the ideas” (p. 102). It should be recorded, however, that laboratory research
showed that the inferiority of traditional group brainstorming methods is not caused by assessment
anxiety but rather by production blocking, because idea development may be interrupted as only
one person can speak at the same time.

Task-Oriented Anxiety

The experience of task-related anxiety may also direct to a decision not to involve in
discretionary behaviors (Beal, Weiss, Barros and MacDermid, 2005) “For example, anxiety
experienced as a result of an approaching deadline may inform a worker that there is not enough
time available for the typical level of helpfulness to other employees” (p. 1063). Similarly, a
worker experiencing this negative emotion may decide not to show personal originality or
voluntary forms of creativity or innovative behavior. A latest contribution about courage and work
(Worline, Wrzesniewski and Rafaeli, 2002) also tolerates interesting suggestions for the role of
fear in initiative and innovation. According to these authors, an action may be considered
courageous if it involves free choice, some sort of risk is present, the risk has been sufficiently
appraised, and the action serves worthy aims. Considering that personal initiative is freely chosen
and worthwhile (Frese & Fay, 2001), horrible circumstances may sometimes activate courageous
actions of initiative. Even though courage is closely related to fear, as it suggests that someone
takes action in a dangerous condition even with experienced anxiety, “courage is different from a
‘pure’ emotional state because it must include certain types of cognitive decisions” (p. 297). A
qualitative study of managers and employees in high technology companies showed that those who
witnessed others’ courageous actions were more likely to overcome fear and act with courage
themselves in a future situation (Worline et al., 2002). Worline and coworkers also openly
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deliberated potential effects of observations of others’ courageous behavior on creativity, arguing

that these influences will be positive when the experience of courage creates positive emotion, but
negative when it creates negative emotion. In addition to assessing positive and negative moods
with the PANAS, George and Zhou (2002) also assessed the exact affective states of fear,
cheerfulness, attentiveness and self-assurance with measures by Watson and Clark (1992), asking
participants how well each item (e.g., scared, joyful) expressed how they felt at duty during the
past week. Of course, it is somewhat questionable whether this measure with the one-week time
frame sufficiently taken separate emotions. None of the four specific affect variables was
considerably correlated with supervisor-rated creative performance. Concerning all of the four
separate affect variables, George and Zhou found support for the same pattern of three-way
interactions as for the common affect dimensions. Fear positively linked to creativity when mood
clearness and recognition of creativity were high, while the three positive affect dimensions
negatively linked to creativity under these situations. Particularly slight research has examined the
role of self-conscious emotions (Tangney, 2003) for individuals’ creativity, initiative and
innovative behavior. Pride, embarrassment, guiltiness and disgrace are called self-conscious
emotions, because they are aroused by self-reflection and self-evaluation.

Pride

Pride is experienced when standards are met or exceeded, whereas the negative self-
conscious emotions are felt when standards are not met. Whereas guiltiness involves a negative
assessment of a specific behavior, embarrassment involves a negative assessment of the global self
(Tangney, 2003). Embarrassment is typically accompanied by feelings of weakness and a wish to
escape the situation. In comparison, guiltiness directs to regret and stimulates reparative behavior,
such as efforts to fix the condition. It is likely that shame may be significantly more harmful to
initiative and innovation than guilt, which may even stimulate these behaviors, because “guilt
stimulates people in a constructive, proactive, future-oriented direction, while embarrassment
motivates people toward good-bye, distance and protection” (p. 388). Tangney also recorded that
guilt may promote sympathy because it highlights the consequences of one’s behavior for
distressed others, whereas the painful self-focus of embarrassment may disrupt the empathic
procedure. As Huy (1999) stressed, sympathy is critical when change agents try to persuade
others’ to implement new processes.
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Guilt
Perrewe and Zellars (1999) claimed that individuals who experience guilt will show
problem-focused handling, whereas those experiencing embarrassment will involve in emotion-
focused handling. Drawing on Weiner’s (1986) attribution-emotion model, Perrewe and Zellars
(1999) claimed that the two attributional dimensions’ locus and manageability will determine the
kind of experienced emotion. Guilt consequences from a manageable and internal attribution (i.e.,
a negative result is seen as caused by oneself), whereas embarrassment consequences from an
unmanageable and internal attribution. Appreciation, which consequences from an external
attribution of a positive event, is less likely to encourage proactive and innovative behavior than
pride, which consequences from an internal and manageable attribution in reply to a positive event.
Tangney (2003) brought difference and separated between “alpha pride” (hubris or pride in the
global self), which may consequence in maladaptive efforts to twist situations to improve the self,
and “beta pride” (pride in a specific action or behavior), which may be advantageous for initiative
and innovative behavior. Pekrun and Frese (1991) recorded that employees experience pride if
they successfully overwhelmed a barrier blocking the path to objective achievement, if this
attainment is attributed to oneself. In common, predicted emotions, such as the pride one presumes
to experience once hurdles are overwhelmed, should be relevant to proactive and innovative
behavior, which include a necessity to anticipate future developments.

Surprise & Hope

Finally, surprise and hope are two separate emotions that may be extremely relevant to
idea development and implementation, but are seldom examined in organizational studies. De
Dreu and West (2001) considered the experience of surprise as the primary mechanism clarifying
why smaller dissent increases creativity: “Smaller dissent is surprising and leads majority members
to wonder why the smaller thinks the way it does […] the tension created by smaller dissent and
the majority’s wish to resolve this tension produce different thinking” (p. 1191). The authors
proposed that reliable smaller dissent is more actual in facilitating creativity than devil’s advocacy,
which is unlikely to elicit the tension and surprise needed to lead creative thinking, because it
includes role-playing behavior by an associate who is known to disagree out of duty. The two
Dutch field studies reported by De Dreu and West presented that smaller dissent also leads to better
innovation if it is joint with high levels of contribution. Huy (1999) claimed that individuals who
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experience hope are more likely to support change in their organizations. Hope may ease
innovative activities and initiative, particularly people’s perseverance in overwhelming barriers:
“Hope pushes people into taking actions that could improve their lot, it fuels their determination,
and, therefore, it sustains mobilization efforts” (p. 338). Huy additional claimed that people with
hope will be more likely to initiate difficult and undefined tasks. However, social psychological
research proposes that the nature and effects of hope may be more multifaceted. As Cornelius
(1996) noted, hope may be defined in terms of the expectations we have about specific conditions
of dealings: “When an objective is significant to us and the possibility of achieving it is high, we
experience high levels of hope” (p. 205). Hope is caused when an advantageous object that is
presently not exist is judged to be achievable. However, Lazarus (1991) classified hope as a
negative emotion, because it does not have a clear-cut action propensity, occurs in goal-
incongruent conditions and includes a wish to escape from a negative condition. Even though
hope may sustain constructive efforts, it may sometimes lead us to have unrealistic hopes and to
continue committed to a course of action that we would be better off leaving” (Cornelius, 1996, p.
206). Averill, Catlin and Chon (1990) recorded that people tend to work tougher and be more
persistent in their struggles to bring about hoped-for events when they feel a sense of control over
these events. Hence, one cause why seeming control positively anticipated personal initiative as
well as creativity and innovation in various studies (e.g., Amabile et al., 1996; Frese et al., 1996;
Speier & Frese, 1997) might be that it may be accompanied by the experience of accurate forms
of hope rather than the problematic kinds of hope deliberated by Lazarus (1991). In conclusion,
field research investigating the role of future-oriented emotions such as hope or predicted pride for
proactive and innovative behavior would be a mainly valuable contribution to the literature.
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Conclusion
Emotions have direct and indirect effects on organizational innovation as discussed the
various types of emotions like hope, anxiety, surprise, anger, exhilaration, passion, fear, joy, love.
According to obviousness emotions are divided into two categories: Internal and external and
according to self-dominant emotions are divided into controllable and uncontrollable. According
to beneficence of an organization, emotions are divided into two types: Positive and negative.
Positive emotions like hope, joy, love, passion, exhilaration have positive effects on organization
innovation as discussed above. Positives emotions encourage employees to work hard and think
more about the future of the organization and positive emotions keep employee mind safe and
comfortable which results the creativity and innovation. Positive emotions work for better
innovations in organization because the passion and the emotion of enthusiasm persuade an
employee for betterment of organization. As positive emotions are beneficial for organization
hence negative emotions have bad effects on organization. If any employee feels angry or get stress
so mentally employee will not be ready to work normally and that is so far for employee to work
for the betterment of an organization. Negative emotions prevent employees from positive thinking
and that is too far to think about the innovation and change. CEO and board of director should take
decisions carefully especially those decisions which are related to employees because if employee
got hurt from any decision so than may not work honestly which will directly affect innovations.
Each type of emotion has a special effect on organizational innovation. But some researchers
suggested that negative emotions can be the starting point of transformation to innovation that
how? it belongs to the decisions of CEO and BoD of the organization. Actually this is qualitative
research review not quantitative. So it needs more to practically visits various organizations and
employees of different stages in organization to find the links and relations between negative
emotions and innovation. Each emotion can be selected as variable for innovation and creativity
to be studied and searched to find and reach the consequences of the emotions. In the studied
articles and thesis researcher didn’t mention any unique model to illustrate the proved links
between specific emotions and its effects on innovation and creativity. I suggest that to study the
effects of each emotion separately on innovations and creativity to prepare a model and apply the
model in organization to gain positive consequences. I mean each emotion needed to be studied
separately to find the positive or negative results of that on innovation.
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