Responding to emotions in China: Gender

Asia Pac J Manag DOI 10.1007/s10490-016-9503-y

Responding to emotions in China: Gender differences and the emotion-job outcome relationship Kelly Z. Peng 1

# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017

Abstract The role of emotion in the workplace has received increasing research attention in the past three decades. Yet there is relatively little direct evidence showing the relationships between discrete emotions and employee attitudinal and behavioral outcomes such as commitment, satisfaction, performance and citizenship behaviors. In this study, empirical data were collected to show that jealousy, joy, and fear experienced in the workplace impact employee outcomes. Furthermore, due to Chinese cultural factors that encourage females’ responses to jealousy, women are expected to be less ambitious with respect to work achievements in reacting to jealousy. Thus the jealousyjob outcomes relationships will be stronger and the joy-job outcomes relationships will be weaker for Chinese females as opposed to the male employees. This expectation receives some support from a sample of 174 male-female pairs of employees and their supervisors in China. Keywords Discrete emotions . Functional perspective . Jealousy . Fear . Joy . Job outcomes . China How do employees respond to emotion-evoking situations in China? Does their performance suffer, or are they able to shrug off specific, difficult emotions such as fear or jealousy as is often assumed? To address this question, in recent years some researchers have suggested that there should be Ba shift in emphasis to balance the interest in moods with an interest in discrete emotions^ and their effects (Brief & Weiss, 2002: 298; Li, Ashkanasy, & Mehmood, 2016). A discrete emotion is defined as a multicomponent response tendency that unfolds over relatively short time periods, and is triggered by specific antecedent events (Barsade, 2002; Gooty, Connelly, Griffith, & Gupta, 2010; Scherer, 1984; Strongman, 1987). In line with the call for research on * Kelly Z. Peng [email protected]

1

Department of Business Administration, Hong Kong Shue Yan University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

K.Z. Peng

discrete emotions (Li, Ahlstrom, & Ashkanasy, 2010a), some have suggested that the effect of discrete emotions on job outcomes may be more relevant than that of moods (Fisher, 2000; Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), which are less specific, of lower intensity, and less likely to be triggered by a particular stimulus or event, compared to emotions (e.g., Martin & Kerns, 2011). This view is supported by the functional perspective in psychology (e.g., Ekman, 1999; Lazarus, 1991), which argues that emotions have different, specific functions which in turn lead to differential action tendencies, types of behavior, and (potentially) differing job performance outcomes (Izard, 1991, 1992, 2009). The emotion of joy, for example, may yield a strong desire to remain in the comfortable and enjoyable environment that is triggering the joy. Thus, this research suggests that in the workplace, frequent joyful experiences may lead to higher satisfaction and lower turnover. Jealousy, on the contrary, may engender a strong feeling of being mistreated and thus a desire to either detach from the situation or take revenge to even up the score. Thus, it may yield lower commitment levels and counterproductive work behaviors. Moreover, appropriate responses to emotions are highly related to specific cultural contexts (e.g., Bagozzi, Wong, & Yi, 1999; Law, Wong, Huang, & Li, 2008; Law, Wong, & Song, 2004) and gender differences (e.g., Bagozzi et al., 1999; Lutz, 1996). Not everyone responds to emotion-evoking situations the same way or even in similar ways. Culture and context matter (Ahlstrom, Chen, & Yeh, 2010; Kenrick, Neuberg, & Cialdini, 2014). Thus, this paper examines whether there are differences in the emotion-job outcomes relationship between genders in China. As an exploratory effort in the Asian context, this study concentrates on the gender interaction associated with two key emotions, jealousy and joy, and the resulting effect on common employee outcomes that are of particular interest to both researchers and managers. More specifically, Chinese culture is more tolerant of women’s strong expression and responses to jealousy, while women are expected to be less ambitious in terms of work achievement (Peng, Ngo, Shi, & Wong, 2009). Thus it can be expected that the jealousyjob outcome relationship will be stronger, while the joy-job outcome relationship will be weaker for Chinese females as opposed to the male employees. This paper makes three main contributions to the management literature, especially for the behavior of employees in the Chinese cultural context. First, the research contributes to the functional perspective and examines the relationship between emotional experiences in the workplace and job outcomes. In this regard, direct empirical evidence is provided concerning the impact of emotional experiences at work on a variety of important employee attitudinal and behavioral outcomes, given they are in the different function of a particular emotion, say jealousy or joy. Second, the research examines the effect of gender roles and the specific cultural context on the emotion-job outcome relationship in the workplace. This provides further evidence about the validity of the functional perspective which argues that each emotion has its own function in helping an individual to adapt and cope with the environment. As a whole, the research also contributes to the literature in that the functional perspective is applicable in predicting various job outcomes by specific discrete emotions while further adding to the evidence regarding workplace emotion in China (Ahlstrom, 2010).

Responding to emotions in China: Gender differences

Management research on discrete emotions Emotions are unavoidable in daily life (Casper, 2001). Discrete emotions are best conceptualized as multicomponent response tendencies that unfold over relatively short timespans, triggered by antecedent events (Barsade, 2002; Gooty et al., 2010; Scherer, 1984; Strongman, 1987). A critical issue in studying discrete emotions in the workplace is that psychologists usually operationalize them as a state of feeling at a particular moment in time (Spielberger, 1979, 1983; Spielberger & Barratt, 1972). In that way, there may be few implications for human resource managers because this view of emotion implies that the arousing of strong emotion in employees should generally be avoided and is epiphenomenal. However, if the work environment regularly and frequently stimulates a certain discrete emotion in employees, then their attitudes and behaviors may be affected not only spontaneously but over an extended period of time as well. Thus, the definition of discrete emotions in the workplace can be rendered as the extent to which the respective emotions are experienced because of the job and work environment, over a particular time period (Wang, Peng, Mao, & Wong, 2015). That is, the frequency can be measured regarding each discrete emotion aroused in the workplace to the extent that respondents can recall them, during a particular period of time (e.g., two months). In remembering feelings over a particular period of time, only those that are of sufficient intensity will be recalled. Thus, this operationalization is generally straightforward and simple enough for respondents to provide reliable ratings for discrete emotions that may actually affect their attitudes and behaviors. Unfortunately, relatively limited research has been conducted on discrete emotions in the management field (but see Ashkanasy & Humphrey, 2011 and also Pekrun & Frese, 1992 for reviews), as emotions have often been seen more as having a dysfunctional role in the workplace (e.g., Argyris, 1985; Ashforth & Humphrey, 1995; Brenner, 1988; Burrough & Helyar, 1990). Among the organizational studies on emotions, however, research concentrated more on affective traits and overall mood instead of discrete emotions. Some studies did investigate the influence of dispositional affective traits on stress and coping processes (e.g., George & Brief, 2001; Lazarus & CohenCharash, 2001). As for moods in the workplace, positive and negative affect (Brief & Weiss, 2002; Levine et al., 2011; Weiss, 2002) were found to be related to organizational spontaneity (George & Brief, 1992), performance evaluations (Robbins & DeNisi, 1994), organizational citizenship behavior, customer service (George, 1991), turnover intention (George & Jones, 1996), and organizational commitment (Li et al., 2010a; Li, Ashkanasy, & Ahlstrom, 2010b). Even management and psychology researchers interested in discrete emotions have often sought ways to group discrete emotions into categories (e.g., Larsen & Diener, 1992). Watson, Clark, and Tellegen (1988) developed the positive affect and negative affect scale (PANAS) to simplify the structure of emotions. Levine et al. (2011) classified discrete basic emotions in the workplace as positive or negative in orientation, and suggested that these orientations are related to citizenship behavior and counterproductive behavior, respectively. However, by classifying emotions only into positive and negative, the role of emotions on employee outcomes may not be fully explored (Li et al., 2010b; Li, Yao, & Ahlstrom, 2015). The functional or evolutionary perspective on emotions is an important, if not dominant, approach in the area of psychology (e.g., Cosmides &

K.Z. Peng

Tooby, 2000; Fridlund, 1994; Izard, 1997; Keltner & Ekman, 2000). More specifically, the basic argument of this perspective is that each emotion serves some particular function that helps individuals to adapt and cope with their environment. For examples, experiencing joy may be related to fundamental human strengths that yield multiple and interrelated benefits. As a job pushes one’s limits and creativity, it signals the replicative potential of certain social actions (Fredrickson, 2001; Nesse, 1990). Jealousy usually involves the fear of loss as well as suspicion of betrayal, and so it may lead to strong attitudinal and behavior responses to maintain the relationship by various individual or organizational means (Li & Ahlstrom, 2016; Nair & Ahlstrom, 2008) or even to withdraw from the relationship altogether (Guerrero & Andersen, 1998). Fear represents the unpleasant feeling due to the threat of danger, pain, or harm that can be learned through observation (Olsson, Nearing, & Phelps, 2006). Experiences of fear may induce an individual to either escape from the danger or put in more effort to get ready to fight off the threat (Öhman, 2000). The management literature has already shown evidence supporting the distinct effects of discrete emotions over positive and negative affect in the workplace (e.g., Lazarus & Cohen-Charash, 2001; Lee & Allen, 2002; Levine et al., 2011). More specifically, the elicited emotions can lead to outcomes in relation to factors such as conceptual orientation, judgment, creative problem solving, helping behavior, general performance, negotiation, and withdrawal (Brief & Weiss, 2002; Li et al., 2010a, b; Li, Ashkanasy, & Ahlstrom, 2014). However, the knowledge of the effects of specific discrete emotions on job outcomes in the workplace is still rather limited.

Cultural settings, gender differences, and emotional responses Another important argument of the functional or evolutionary perspective is that the development of emotions in human beings, or even for any other living organisms, is an evolutionary or adaptive process (e.g., Cosmides & Tooby, 2000; Fridlund, 1994; Izard, 1997; Keltner & Ekman, 2000). The emotions that result from actions presumably helped our ancestors to survive life-or-death situations (Darwin, 1872; Tooby & Cosmides, 1990). Thus, the functions of discrete emotions are essential to human evolution and adaptation to the environment (Fredrickson, 2001; Li et al., 2014). As human beings are social animals, survival depends on cooperation and division of roles and labor. This means that the responses to emotions of others in social settings will be shaped by their background and environment; importantly, the appropriateness of emotional responses differs across societies that have different cultural backgrounds (Law et al., 2004). Hochschild’s (1975, 1981, 2012) normative theory about emotion predicts malefemale differences in feelings and expressive behavior that are consistent with genderspecific emotion beliefs. Hochschild (1975, 1981, 2012) argues that cultural beliefs about emotion influence individuals’ feelings and expressions as well as their encouragement (or lack thereof) in expressing emotion. That is, culture also has differential expectations on gender roles in the way that Bgender differences in emotions are adaptive for the differing roles that males and females play in this culture^ (Brody & Hall, 1993: 452). However, research both in psychology and sociology on gender difference in emotions has focused mainly on the feeling and expression of emotions rather than how men or women respond to the emotion differently. There is even less


research on this issue in the workplace settings. That is, there is limited knowledge on gender difference of emotion-job outcome relationship in specific cultural environments. The current study would like to explore this issue under Chinese context as a preliminary effort towards this direction. Therefore, the focus here is on two emotions from which Chinese may expect very different responses from male and female employees. The first one is jealousy, the resentment toward a third party due to the loss or threat of loss of another’s affection or favor. Rawls (1971) proposed that jealousy characterizes a person who may be better off than others, but wants them to remain in an inferior position. Jealousy may lead such a person to deny benefits to others, even though the jealous worker does not actually need those benefits himself (Spielman, 1971). Thus, if jealousy is related to job outcomes, it would likely have a negative impact on employees’ attitudinal outcomes such as affective commitment, job satisfaction, and behavioral outcomes such as performance, organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) and counter-productive work behaviors (CWB), while positive impact on turnover (Fig. 1). In Chinese culture, jealousy is an emotion more often associated with women. For examples, the written Chinese character for the word jealousy is made up of two parts, namely, Bwoman^ and Bhome.^ One of the ancient Chinese dictionaries, Shuowen Jiezi, states the meaning of this character as women disliking a third party who threatens their husbands’ affection. More than one thousand years ago, the worship of the Goddess of Jealousy became an official ceremony organized by the Chinese government. One of the most famous and influential novels in Chinese literature, Dream of Red Mansions, even mentioned the detailed ingredients and way to prepare a particular type of soup that may reduce the jealousy level of women. On the contrary, men in the Chinese tradition are not expected to hold much jealousy and explicitly response to such emotion (Ahlstrom, Young, Chan, & Bruton, 2004; Chen, 2001). More specifically, if a man responds strongly because of jealousy, he would probably face more negative social pressures from other Chinese people. Thus, Chinese society generally expects that women will experience and act upon jealous emotions more often. Thus it is hypothesized: Hypothesis 1 The relationship between jealousy experienced in the workplace on employee attitudinal and behavioral outcomes are stronger for Chinese females for male employees.

Gender

Emotions: Jealousy Joy Fear

Fig. 1 Conceptual model of this study

Employee Outcomes: Commitment Job Satisfaction Turnover Intention Performance OCB CWB

K.Z. Peng

Another typical emotion that is expected to evoke significantly different responses from Chinese women and men is joy. Joy is a pleasant feeling resulting from making progress toward one’s goals, some impending gain, or other experienced desirable event or outcome. Experiencing joy might be related to fundamental human strengths that yield multiple, interrelated benefits. Specifically, joy, which is expressed by pushing limits and being creative, signals the reproductive potential of certain social actions (Fredrickson, 2001; Nesse, 1990). In the workplace, experiencing joy should have a positive impact on employee attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. In Chinese culture, it is very clear that joy experienced in work is expected to be much more important for men than women. Family-related factors, such as marital status and child care obligation, are generally expected to inhibit women’s work commitment, which has received support from studies conducted in Western countries (e.g., Gutek & Cohen, 1987; Loscocco, 1990). In China, even in recent years where it is common that women would participate in the workforce, women are still not expected to put work and career ahead of their families. And as noted, research has found that Chinese women hold a lower level of work commitment than men (Peng et al., 2009). The general social and institutional environment also encourages male workers to be more committed to their work. For example, the mandated retirement age of female Chinese female workers is five years younger than their male counterparts (China Daily, 2016), despite the fact that the life expectancy of Chinese women is three years longer than that of Chinese men (World Health Organization, 2015). Also, the old saying Bcontrary to a man, the virtue of a woman is due to the fact that she does not have talent and ability^ is popular in Chinese societies—a saying that reflects the different roles concerning work and achievement for males and females in China. Thus, male employees are expected to care more (and place more value) on the achievement and joy derived from work than their female counterparts in China. Therefore it is hypothesized: Hypothesis 2 The relationship between joy experienced in the workplace and employee attitudinal and behavioral outcomes will be stronger for Chinese male employees than the female ones.

Methods Two important issues are involved in our research design. First, as an exploratory effort, empirical evidence confirming to our two hypotheses may not be sufficient. It is because both hypotheses are arguing that gender may serve as moderator for the emotion-job outcome relationship. This is based on the observation that under Chinese culture, men and women are expected respond to those emotions differently. However, evidence will be stronger if it can be demonstrated that some emotions do not have such gender differences in the Chinese culture. This is also consistent with the basic argument of the functional perspective that individual emotions serve some specific functions. Thus, as a comparison and further support of the functional perspective, it is essential to show that the impact of some emotions on job outcomes do not have gender differences in China.


One possible example is the emotion of fear. As stated before, fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm. Fearful people may also make pessimistic judgments about future events (Lerner & Keltner, 2000) and seek to avoid uncertainty. Thus, if employees consistently experience fear in the workplace, they probably may develop more negative attitudes toward their jobs and organizations. However, unlike jealousy and joy, there is no strong cultural reason to expect Chinese male and female employees respond differently to fear experienced at work. Therefore, fear is included in the study, although no gender differences concerning fear’s relationships with employee attitudinal and behavioral outcomes are hypothesized. Second, as the hypotheses mainly concern gender differences, it is important to make sure that in the sample, the male and female employee subsamples are comparable. Thus, I selected employees in pairs of male and female. For each pair, they occupy the same job positions so that the job contents and requirements are the same for the two subsamples. I also collected data from the same organization to control for organizational practices such as reward systems. Finally, the research participants were asked to report their educational level and organizational tenure to check if they are comparable on these two variables which may affect their job outcomes.

Procedure and sample Data were gathered from a large private firm in Mainland China. To confirm that there are comparable male and female respondents, the Human Resources Director of the firm was asked to provide pairs of employees, and each pair of the sample consisted of a male and a female employee who held the same job position. This ensured that the male and female subsamples are equivalent in their job duties and requirements, and are subjected to the same set of human resource practices of the company. The Human Resources Director selected 200 pairs of employees from 100 job positions and questionnaires were distributed to those 400 employees and their supervisors. Each questionnaire had a code number and in the cover letter that was used only for matching with their supervisors’ responses. Confidentiality of individual information was guaranteed. All respondents sent their questionnaires back to the researcher directly through stamped envelopes. A total of 174 pairs of respondents (i.e., 348 employees) could be matched with their supervisors’ questionnaires, thus yielding a total of 378 supervisorsubordinate dyads.

Measures The employees provided information about their emotional feelings of jealousy, fear and joy over the recent two-month period. They also responded to the affective commitment, job satisfaction and turnover intention scales. To double check for the comparability of the male and female subsamples, they were also asked to provide information on their educational levels and tenure with the organization. The supervisor questionnaires contained items measuring the job performance, OCB and CWB of the employees. The response format for all items was five-point Likert-type scale.

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Jealousy, fear and joy Wang et al. (2015) reviewed existing measures for various discrete emotions and developed additional measures of various discrete emotions for Chinese respondents. Consistent with previous measures on emotions, their scale provides adjectives of different feelings and asked the extent to which the respondents had those feelings during a particular period of time. For each discrete emotion, their scale contains three synonyms. As their scale was developed for Chinese respondents and was validated with multiple samples, their nine items were adopted to measure the jealousy, fear and joy experiences of the respondents over the previous two months. The internal consistency reliability for jealousy, fear and joy of this sample were .94, .84 and .73, respectively. Affective commitment Six items from Meyer, Allen, and Smith’s (1993) organizational commitment scale were included in the employee questionnaire. A sample item is BI would be very happy to spend the rest of my career in this organization.^ The internal consistency reliability of this sample is .92. Job satisfaction Three items of job satisfaction from Price and Mueller (1981) were included in the employee questionnaire. A sample item is BI feel well satisfied with my job.^ The internal consistency reliability of this sample is .88. Turnover intention The three items from the scale of Withey and Cooper (1989) were included in the employee questionnaire to measure turnover intention of the employee. A sample item is BGetting into action and looking for another job.^ The internal consistency reliability of this sample is .96. Performance The supervisor questionnaire contained Williams and Anderson’s (1991) seven-item scale of task performance. A sample item is BAdequately completes assigned duties.^ The internal consistency reliability of this sample is .85. OCB The supervisor questionnaire contained eight items from Dalal, Lam, Weiss, Welch, and Hulin (2009) measuring OCB. A sample item is BVolunteered to do something that was not required.^ The internal consistency reliability of this sample is .73. CWB Seven items from Bennett and Robinson (2000) measuring workplace deviance behavior which represents counter-productive work behaviors were also included in the

Responding to emotions in China: Gender differences Table 1 Descriptive statistics and correlation among variables Mean S.D. 1

2

3

4

1. Jealousy

1.58

.77

2. Fear

1.72

.71

3. Joy

2.98

.80

−.02

4. Affective commitment 3.34

.77

−.29** −.18**

.22**

5. Job satisfaction

3.32

.82

−.28** −.15**

.34**

6. Turnover intention

1.97

.90

7. Performance

3.44

.41

−.02

−.08

−.06

8. OCB

3.70

.63

−.08

−.11

.06

9. CWB

1.63

.68

5

6

7

8

9

(.94) .64**

.31**

.22**

(.84) −.02

(.73) (.92) .78**

(.88)

.27** −.19** −.38** −.36**

.25** −.03

−.02 .15**

−.06 .13*

−.15** −.16**

(.96) −.03 −.09

(.85) .51**

.19** −.13*

(.73) −.41** (.95)

Coefficient alphas are reported in parentheses OCB Organizational citizenship behavior, CWB Counter-productive work behavior n = 348; **p < .01; *p < .05

supervisor questionnaire. A sample item is BSaid something hurtful to someone at work.^ The internal consistency reliability of this sample is .95.

Results The descriptive statistics of each discrete emotion scale and the corresponding reliabilities are shown in Table 1. Before examining the potential impact of jealousy, fear and joy experiences on various job outcomes, two sets of analyses were conducted to check for the appropriateness of the data and the sample. First, confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) are conducted to check the validity of the measurement scales. Second, the mean differences in educational level, tenure with the organization and all the emotional experience and outcome variables between the male and female subsamples were compared to further evaluate the comparability of the two subsamples. Results of the CFA indicated that the nine factor model of the nine variables (i.e., jealousy, fear, job, affective commitment, job satisfaction, turnover intention, performance, OCB and CWB) fit the data well (χ2 (df = 824) = 1,994.37, RMSEA = .06, TLI = .95, CFI = .96). The one factor model fits the model very poorly (χ2 (df = 860) = 9,107.61, RMSEA = .24, TLI = .67, CFI = .71). I also tried different models such as combining the three emotions as one factor. All other models do not meet the traditional standards of model fit such as RMSEA smaller than .08, and TLI and CFI greater than .90. Thus, the measurement scales appear to be valid in capturing nine different factors. As for the differences between the male and female subsamples, t-tests were conducted on all the nine variables, and educational level and tenure with organization. No significant differences are observed both for the mean and variance for all variables except for CWB. Females have a slightly higher level of CWB, but the difference is only .17 (p < .05) on the five-point scale. Thus, taken together with the fact that I intentionally selected pairs of respondents from the same job positions in the same

K.Z. Peng

company, it appears reasonable to conclude that the two subsamples should be highly comparable. To test the hypotheses, a multi-sample analyses of structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed, using a two-step approach as suggested by (Anderson & Gerbing, 1988). Specifically, the measurement model is estimated in the first step and the covariance estimated from this step is used as the input for the structural model analyses in the second step. The baseline model was estimated, which allows all the paths from the three emotions to the six outcomes to be different for the male and female subsamples (Model 1). To test Hypothesis 1, equality constraints were imposed on the six paths from jealousy to employee outcomes (Model 2). To test Hypothesis 2, the equality constraints were also imposed for the six paths from joy to employee outcomes (Model 3). To make sure that the results of the hypothesis testing were not due to chance, Model 4 was also created; it imposes equality constraints on the paths from fear to employee outcomes. Results are shown in Table 2. As expected, Model 2 is significantly different from Model 1 (Δχ2 = 21.16, Δdf = 6, p < .01), indicating that the effects of jealousy on employee outcomes are different between male and female subsamples in this sample in China. Model 3 also significantly differently from Model 1 (Δχ2 = 120.74, Δdf = 6, p < .01), indicating that the effects of joy on employee outcomes are different between male and female subsamples. On the contrary, Model 1 did not prove significantly different from Model 4 (Δχ2 = 120.74, Δdf = 6, n.s.). That is, the effects of fear on employee outcomes are the same male and female subsamples. Thus, we can be confident that the results of comparing Model 1 with Models 2 and 3 are not due to chance. To test the difference of a particular emotion on a particular employee outcome, I impose the equality constraint on the specific path of Model 4 to examine the difference of the path between male and female subsamples. Results are shown in Table 3. For jealousy, the effects on behavioral outcomes (i.e., performance, OCB and CWB) are stronger for the female employees. Thus, Hypothesis 1 received support for the behavioral outcomes. For joy, the effects on attitudinal outcomes (i.e., affective commitment, job satisfaction and turnover intention) proved stronger for the male employees. Thus, Hypothesis 2 also received support for the attitudinal outcomes.

Table 2 Results of hypothesis testing χ2 (df)

Δχ2 (df)

Model 1: All emotions to employee outcome paths are free for male and female subsamples

368.48(54)

–

Model 2: Jealousy to employee outcome paths are equal for male and female subsamples

347.32(48)

21.16(6)**

Model 3: Joy to employee outcome paths are equal for male and female subsamples

247.74(48)

120.74(6)**

Model 4: Fear to employee outcome paths are equal for male and female subsamples

360.90(48)

7.58(6)

**p < .01; *p < .05

−.61**

−.52**

.32**

2. Job satisfaction

3. Turnover intention

.26**

−.00

6. CWB

−.17*

* p < .05; ** p < .01

.16* .03

−.03

−.04

−.16*

−.35** .06

.38**

.28**

Female Group

.96**

OCB Organizational citizenship behavior, CWB Counter-productive work behavior

n = 174 both male and female subsamples

.27*

−.20*

5. OCB −.26*

.30**

−.20*

.11

.07

4. Performance

.10

.22*

.09

.79**

−.51**

−.50**

1. Affective commitment

.01

Male Group

FemaleGroup

Male Group

Difference

Joy

Jealousy

Table 3 Results of the path coefficients of emotions on employee outcomes

−.20

.19

.10

−.19*

.58**

.51**

Difference

.20

−.09

−.15

.11

.30**

.20**

Male Group

Fear

.20

−.09

−.15

.11

.30**

.20**

Female Group

.00

.00

.00

.00

.00

.00

Difference


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Discussion The role of emotions in the workplace ranging from emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1998; Goleman, Boyatzis, & McKee, 2002) to high performance work systems (Huang, Ahlstrom, Lee, Chen, & Hsieh, 2016) has been receiving increasing attention in recent decades from researchers, consultants and the general public alike (Casper, 2001). Emotions have further been recognized for their significant impact on organizational life (Ashkanasy & Humphrey, 2011). Some management researchers have called for the adoption of the functional perspective so that a more detailed understanding of the effects of individual emotions in the workplace may be generated (e.g., Brief & Weiss, 2002). In response to this call, this paper has explored the impact of gender and select emotions in Chinese organizations on job outcomes. The results indicated that for emotions like jealousy and joy, which bear strong cultural influences on how men and women should respond, gender differences were observed for their relationships with various job outcomes. The females showed stronger negative effects on behavioral outcomes (i.e., performance, OCB and CWB) in experiencing jealousy than did the male employees. Meanwhile, the males showed stronger effects on attitudinal outcomes (i.e., affective commitment, job satisfaction and turnover intention) than the female employees. However, for emotions like fear no gender differences were observed in this sample in China. An interesting finding is about performance. Performance was not affected by the three emotions under our investigation. This probably reflects the necessity to maintain a satisfactory performance level in order to meet the formal requirements of the company. Thus, employees have to perform even when they experiences undesirable emotions, and they find a way to do so in spite of their emotional. The only exception about the emotion-performance relationship is for female employees. For this subsample, jealousy did have a negative effect on performance. This is consistent with the observation of Chinese culture that women are expected to react more strongly to jealousy and work achievement is less important to them. The findings also provided important contributions to theory and empirical evidence with respect to the functional perspective in the workplace. First, the current study shows that the functional perspective and the new conceptualization of emotion are also well applied in the workplace. The study provides empirical evidence showing different discrete emotions do have differential impacts on different job outcomes. For example, fear is only related to affective commitment and job satisfaction but not related to any behavioral outcomes, while jealousy and joy do have effects on both attitudinal outcomes and CWB, which is behavioral in nature. This provides support to the basic argument of the functional perspective to uncover the detailed impact of each emotion on employee outcomes. Meanwhile, the results also gave support to the new operationalization which provides reliable ratings for discrete emotions that may actually affect attitudes and behaviors at the workplaces. Second, this exploratory study taps two possible reasons behind the gender difference in discrete emotion-job outcome relationship. According to Hochschild’s (1975, 1981, 2012) normative theory, culture will shape the norms of how people experience and react to emotions, and gender may further impact reactions. This is consistent, for example, with previous observations that women reported a lower level of job commitment than men in China (Peng et al., 2009).


Third, the current study also contributes to the functional perspective of emotions by looking into the difference between males and females in the workplace, again by incorporating Hochschild’s normative theory. The responses to jealousy and joy are quite different for male and female employees. For jealousy, it only negatively affected the job attitudes of male employees such as affective commitment, job satisfaction and turnover intention. However, for female employees, not only will their job attitudes become more negative, they will also have lower performance and OCB, and more CWB. As for joy, the situation is almost the opposite. Joy can only affect the attitudinal reactions of female employees. However, for male employees, not only do they have stronger attitudinal reactions, their OCB and CWB will also be affected in the more desirable direction. Fourth, this study also provides some bridge between studies on mood and emotion. In the extant literature, emotions are conceptualized as short-lived and specific while mood is relatively longer in span and more general. The results of this study show that specific emotions experienced frequently over a longer period of time will have various effects on job outcomes. Future research may further explore the relationship between specific emotions and mood and whether mood can be classified in more specific terms rather than simply being labelled as either positive or negative. Conceptually, the potential utility of applying the functional perspective and Hochschild’s normative theory in the workplace has been demonstrated. In the Chinese context, this work further illustrates the potential influence of cultural factors on the specific emotion and job outcomes relationship. As such, the study calls for more studies in the future to explore the antecedents of a specific emotion in the workplace, and to uncover more details concerning how a specific emotion, in state nature, may affect a specific job outcome. Finally, this study contributes to practice, especially in China. First, employee emotions are related to a variety of attitudinal and behavioral reactions. Managers should not treat them as barriers to their rational judgment and behaviors (Li et al., 2014). Instead, they should be more sensitive to employee emotions and respect their feelings. In addition, managers (and certainly others in authority, such as law enforcement officials) should try to pay more attention to how culture and the social environment may impact employee reactions to different emotions in other, distant cultures. Culture and social context matter greatly, particularly in organizations (Kenrick et al., 2014; Young, Tsai, Wang, Liu, & Ahlstrom, 2014). People do not respond to difficult (or joyful) situations in the same way. This research has suggested that both gender and culture play a role in how emotions such as jealousy and joy impact employee responses. In this way, managers may understand and manage employee emotions in a better way and probably able to create a better work environment for their employees. Second, it is preferable for Chinese managers and employees to have open communication with employees, especially about their emotions. This research further serves as a reminder of the importance of emotion and its role in key organizational functions. Differential emotions may lead to different outcomes. Managers and others in authority should be sensitive and try to cultivate an open-minded approach so as to have some guidance on the emotion-attitude/behavior relationship.

Robustness, limitations and future research Although this study is carefully designed to make sure the male and female subsamples are comparable, there are four possible limitations in these data. First, while the data

K.Z. Peng

were collected from both the employees and their supervisors, the threat of common method variances cannot be avoided for the attitudinal outcomes. For these outcomes, both the independent and dependent variables have to be reported by the employees. To examine this potential threat, a series of alternative analyses were conducted. Specifically, in the first step of the SEM analysis, a common method factor was specified for all the variables reported by the employees and used the resulting covariance matrix as the input for the second step analyses. The results indicated that our conclusions are still valid although the path coefficients between the three emotions and the attitudinal outcomes became a little bit smaller, under that test. Yet, common method variance did not appear to invalidate the conclusions or undermine the data. The second limitation is that a survey method was utilized to measure the three types of emotions. While the advantage of using this method is that one can assess the overall emotional experiences over a particular period of time, the direction of causal relationships between emotions and employee outcomes may not be strong enough. Although this study may not be regarded as a typical cross-sectional design (because employees were asked about their emotional experiences in the past two months), the causal directions may be debatable. Future research may consider using other methods such as experiments to provide stronger evidence for the causal effect of each emotion on specific employee reactions. Third, although this paper adopted the functional perspective, the focus here was to provide direct relationships only between three emotions (i.e., jealousy, joy and fear) and six job outcomes. Other important discrete emotions were not included in this original exploratory study. Also, while there are some differences in the relationships (e.g., fear does not have an effect on turnover intention while jealousy and joy do), further evidence is needed to uncover the differential impact of individual emotions on job outcomes. Future research may also be designed to provide stronger evidence in this regard. Finally, as a first step to explore the utility of applying the functional perspective in the Chinese context, direct evidence on the emotions-job outcomes relationship and influences of Chinese culture was provided. This study did not examine the reasons or antecedents of the emotional experiences. In the workplace, there are many events that may arouse employee emotions. However, other classes of events such as retrenchment, turnaround, crises, and other emotionally charged events were not addressed (Bruton, Ahlstrom, & Wan, 2003). In this regard, the affective events theory (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) may provide a good conceptual framework to guide the investigation of the characteristics of major events in the workplace that are likely to lead to the arousal of various discrete emotions.

Conclusion The role of emotion in the workplace has received increasing research attention in the past three decades. Yet there is relatively little direct evidence showing the relationships between discrete emotions and employee attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. Different people could also be expected to respond differently to emotion-evoking situations, based on gender and culture (Ahlstrom et al., 2010; Chen, 2001; Hochschild, 2012; Peng et al., 2009). In this study, jealousy brought about more negative behaviors outcomes by females at workplaces in China, which is consistent with traditional Chinese cultural expectations. Males in China, on the other hand, responded more strongly to joy which positively impacted their attitudinal outcomes at job. Emotion


matters, and it especially matters in the workplace (Ashkanasy & Humphrey, 2011). This research is an early step at further clarifying these important differences and in building a fuller understanding of people’s emotion-job outcomes relationships in the workplace as well as addressing culture’s impact on emotions, their expression and effects.

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K.Z. Peng Weiss, H. M., & Cropanzano, R. 1996. Affective events theory: A theoretical discussion of the structure, causes and consequences of affective experiences at work. In B. M. Staw, & L. L. Cummings (Eds.). Research in organizational behavior: An annual series of analytical essays and critical reviews, vol. 18: 1–74. Greenwich: JAI Press. Williams, L. J., & Anderson, S. E. 1991. Job satisfaction and organizational commitment as predictors of organizational citizenship and in-role behaviors. Journal of Management, 17(3): 601–617. Withey, M. J., & Cooper, W. H. 1989. Predicting exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect. Administrative Science Quarterly, 34(4): 521–539. World Health Organization. 2015. World health statistics 2015. http://www.who.int/gho/publications/world_ health_statistics/2015/en/. Young, M. N., Tsai, T., Wang, X., Liu, S., & Ahlstrom, D. 2014. Strategy in emerging economies and the theory of the firm. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 31(2): 331–354. Kelly Z. Peng (PhD, The Chinese University of Hong Kong) is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Business Administration, Hong Kong Shue Yan University. She has published in management, psychology, and education journals such as the Journal of Management, Human Resources Management, Journal of World Business, Intelligence, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Journal of Career Development, Educational Management and Administration, and Asia Pacific Journal of Management. Her research interests include emotions (emotional intelligence) in management, proactivity, employment relationship, indigenous research in China, stress and burnout, career development, and research methodology.