Towards Integrating Emotions into Strategic Management Research: Trait Affect and Perceptions of the Strategic Environment
| Author | Kevin Daniels |
| Date | 01 September 1998 |
| Published date | 01 September 1998 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.00081 |
Introduction
There is a growing literature on cognition and
strategic management (such as Hodgkinson, 1997;
Sparrow, 1994; Walsh, 1995), which has, to date,
ignored emotions. This paper reports a study of
the association between the disposition to experi-
ence negative emotions and perceptions of vari-
ous elements of the strategic environment. The
term ‘affect’ is used rather than ‘emotion’ or
‘mood’ (Parkinson, 1995). ‘Emotion’ denotes feel-
ings towards an event, object or person. ‘Mood’
denotes feelings that are not linked to a specific
event, object or person. ‘Affect’ is more general
and subsumes the other terms. Affectivity is a
dispositional tendency to experience some types
of affect more than others. Negative affectivity is
a disposition to experience affects such as anxiety
and depression (Watson and Clark, 1984).
A number of studies indicate that affect influ-
ences cognition. Laboratory studies indicate that
anxiety biases attention towards threat and de-
pression biases recall toward negative information
(Dalgleish and Watts, 1990; MacCleod, 1991; Matt,
Vazquez and Campbell, 1992). Organizational
studies too indicate that affect influences cogni-
tion: negative affectivity correlates with self-reports
of stressful work environments (e.g. Burke, Brief
and George, 1993; Spector and O’Connell, 1994;
Williams, Gavin and Williams, 1996) and situational
negative affect is associated with subsequent self-
reports of negative working environments (Daniels
and Guppy, 1997; Firth-Cozens and Hardy, 1992).
The proposition that negative affect influences
perceptions of aspects of the strategic environ-
ment was examined by measuring negative affect-
ivity in a cross-sectional survey of managers. This
method is appropriate as the research is explor-
atory (Cook and Campbell, 1976). Negative af-
fectivity was used to measure affect to control for
possible reciprocal causation between perception
and affect. Negative affectivity is a stable dis-
position (Watson and McKee Walker, 1996), and
is unlikely to be influenced by current perceptions
of the strategic environment.
British Journal of Management, Vol. 9, 163–168 (1998)
Towards Integrating Emotions into
Strategic Management Research:
Trait Affect and Perceptions of the
Strategic Environment1
Kevin Daniels
Sheffield University Management School, Sheffield S1 4DT, UK
This paper describes an empirical investigation of the associations between trait neg-
ative affect and perceptions of the strategic environment. Data were collected from two
samples of managers undertaking a distance learning MBA course (n = 59, n = 272). In
the smaller sample, significant correlations were found between negative affectivity
and perceptions of poor organizational performance and industry complexity. These
results were replicated in the larger sample, after controlling for other variables.
Additionally, negative affectivity was found to be related to perceived industry growth,
and marginally related to perceived industry competitiveness.
© 1998 British Academy of Management
1I am grateful to Dr Jacky Holloway and Dr Geoff
Mallory.
To continue reading
Request your trial