Displayed Emotions as Organizational Attributes

SUMMARY OF SESSION 1: READING 2

Introduction:-

Emotions play a vital role in an organization. Many organizations have display rules which specify which emotion should be expressed & which should be hidden. Organizations also use reward and punishment systems i.e. employees who display right emotions are rewarded and those who display wrong emotions are punished. Hence, the conveyed emotions act as control moves for the individuals as well as organizations.

Displayed Emotions as Organizational Attributes:-

Employees who display good cheer to customers can enhance sales and loyalty & the probability that a given customer will visit an organization second time is increased by employees display of positive emotions.

Quantitative and Deductive Study:-

Research Context: The corporations HR conducted the research by training the clerks to discover how positive emotions led to increased sale.

Sample :

A Sample of 576 stores from 7000 stores was selected for study.

Procedure:

Observers acting as incognito participants & the director of field research conducted the study. It was found that the correlation ranged from 0.94 to 0.67. The mean correlation was 0.82 and median correlation was 0.85.

Predictor Variable:- Display of positive Emotions.

Control Variables:-

1. Store Ownership
2. Supervision costs
3. Stock Level
4. Customers gender composition
5. Clerks gender composition
6. Average Line Length
7. Display of positive Emotions
8. Clerks Image

Criterion Variable: Total Store Sales

Results of the Study :- 

The eight control variables yielded a multiple R of 0.28 and an adjusted R-square of 0.06. Now, the eight control variables along with index of positive emotions yielded a R of 0.30 and an adjusted square of 0.07. Hence the variance with index of positive emotions contributed significantly which contradicted the hypothesis giving the results that higher level of positive emotions were associated with lower store sales. Hence, the qualitative study was conducted to help understand why quantitative evidence contradicted our central hypothesis.

Qualitative and Inductive Study:- 

A Qualitative and Inductive Study was conducted to explain the unexpected negative relationship between the expression of positive emotion and store sales.

Qualitative Method:-

 Cases were divided with employee courtesy and store sales which fits into following categories:-

1. High Sales and clerks who typically displayed positive emotions to customers.
2. High Sales and clerks who typically did not display positive emotions.
3. Low Sales and clerks who did not display positive emotions.
4. Low Sales and clerks who did not display positive emotions.

A interview was conducted with the manager of the store and also the authors did the study by working as a clerk, attending the customer service workshops and made purchases to observe clerk’s displayed emotions. Collecting and analyzing data refined the understanding of difference between busy and slow settings and implications of store pace for displayed emotions.