Emotion Regulation Strategy, Emotional Contagion and Their Effects on Individual Creativity: ICT Company Case in South Korea

Transcription

1 Emotion Regulation Strategy, Emotional Contagion and Their Effects on Individual Creativity: ICT Company Case in South Korea Dae Sung Lee 1 and Kun Chang Lee 2* 1 Researcher, SKKU Business School Creativity Science Research Institute Sungkyunkwan University Seoul , Republic of Korea leeds1122@gmail.com 2 Professor, SKKU Business School Director, Creativity Science Research Institute Sungkyunkwan University Seoul , Republic of Korea * Corresponding author kunchanglee@gmail.com Abstract:- It is widely accepted that creativity is critical to enhance organizational effectiveness and survival in hyper-competitive business situations. Emotion is also an important factor in manipulating the creativity in companies and teams as well. However, it still remains unanswered how the emotion regulation and emotion contagion team members feel have an influence on individual creativity. By using 150 questionnaire survey data collected from ICT companies in South Korea, we proved that managers should pay careful attention to employee s emotion such as how they regulate their emotion, and how emotion is contagious to others in organizations. Key Words:- Emotion regulation; Reappraisal; Emotional contagion; Creativity 1 Introduction Employee creativity has been regarded as an imperative factor for organizational innovation, which can increase an organization s adaptability and growth in the global competitive business environment. Affect is an attracting predictor of creativity because it is believed to often have functions as an intermediary state between situational and personality predictors and creative performance (Baas et al., 2008). Researchers have explored how employees control emotions in order to improve work outcomes (Grandey, 2000). One example is an employee changing how he feels, or what feelings she shows, so as to communicate with coworkers and customers in an effective way. In addition, frequent emotion contacts give rise to emotional contagion (Hatfield et al., 1994). In workplace, emotional contagions by mood convergence take place in domains such as cooperation (Barsade 2002), negotiation and successful leadership. Emotion regulation is referred to as the processes by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions (Gross, 1998b). According to Gross (1998a; 1998b), emotion regulation strategies were divided into two forms ISBN:

2 (antecedent-focused and response-focused). Under antecedent-focused strategies, individuals modify the situation or the perception of the situation so as to adjust emotions. Antecedent-focused emotion regulation includes situation selection, situation modification, attention deployment, and cognitive change (Gross, 1998b). On the other hand, response-focused strategies may be used once an emotion is already underway, after the response tendencies have already been generated. People might engage in response-focused emotion regulation, or response modulation. In this process, individuals do not modify the situation or the perception of the situation, but control the emotional expression of his reaction to the situation. Emotional contagion has been defined as the tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize expressions, vocalizations, postures and movements with those of another person s and, consequently, to converge emotionally (Hatfield et al., 1994). People commonly disclose emotional experiences to others, but respondents do not always express the same emotion as a responding. According to Hatfield and his colleagues (1992, 1994), the degree to which emotional contagion then turns up is mediated by attentional processes. Attentional processes is influenced by external factors inherent to the emotion such as the type and level of energy for emotional expression (Barsade, 2002). This study adopts the effects of emotion regulation and emotion contagion on creativity. To extract more insightful results, we collected data from ICT companies in South Korea. 2 Research Model Figure 1 depicts the proposed research model. Fig 1. The Proposed Research Model ISBN:

3 2.1Emotion regulation and emotional contagion Gross (1998a) found that when participants with the suppression condition hided emotional reactions to a negative emotioneliciting film, they experienced as much negative emotion. On the other hand, when participants with the reappraisal condition thought about the film, they would not respond emotionally. Namely, reappraisal decreased both the experience and the behavioral expression triggered by negative emotion. In the study of Gross and John s experiment (2003), reappraisal was related to greater experience and expression of positive emotion, whereas individuals frequently using suppression experienced and expressed less positive emotion. With respect to negative emotion, reappraisal was related to less negative-emotion experience and expression, whereas individuals frequently using suppression experienced and expressed more negative emotion. In that positive (or negative) emotional contagion would be closely related to positive (or negative) emotion (Barsade, 2002), emotion regulation is likely to lead to emotional contagion. Therefore, we built the following hypotheses. H1: Reappraisal will positively contribute to positive emotional contagion.. H2: Reappraisal will negatively contribute to negative emotional contagion.. H3: Suppression will positively contribute to positive emotional contagion. H4: Suppression will negatively contribute to negative emotional contagion. 2.2 Emotion regulation and creativity Suppression brings about memory impairment for social information (Gross & John, 2003). According to Gross (2002), reappraisal decreases emotion experience and behavioral expression, and has no impact on memory. By contrast, suppression decreases behavioral expression, but fails to decrease emotion experience, and actually impairs memory. Suppression also increases physiological responding for suppressors and their social partners. Moreover, suppression undermines social functioning to a much greater extent than reappraisal (Gross & John, 2003). Thus, suppression is negatively related to creativity. While creativity at the individual level is related to a situation in which a person is solving problems in a job or in daily life, creativity at the social level can lead to new scientific findings, new movements in art, new inventions, and new social programs (Sternberg & Lubart, 1999). Reappraisal accompanies the give-and- take emotional communication (Gross & John, 2003). The interactionist model of creativity emphasizes social influences from group and contextual influences from organization, which have effects on individual and team creativity (Woodman & Schoenfeldt, 1989; Woodman et al, 1993). In this respect, reappraisal might be positively related to creativity. Accordingly, we suggest the following hypotheses: H5: Reappraisal will positively contribute to creativity. H6: Suppression will negatively contribute to creativity. 2.3 Emotional contagion and creativity Overall, most studies have supported that positive affect would be positively related to creativity in workplace (Barsade & Gibson, 2007). Amabile and her associates (2005) performed a longitudinal field study on the relationship between affect and creativity. Their componential theory of creativity proposed that the work environment would have an effect on the events in the daily work environment producing affect, and affect would influence creativity-relevant processes (one of three components). In their study, positive mood positively influenced creative thought, but negative emotion, such as ISBN:

4 sadness, anger and fear, were negatively related to. Positive (or negative) emotional contagion would be is closely related to positive (or negative) emotion (Barsade, 2002). In this sense, emotional contagion is likely to influence creativity. Related hypotheses are as follows. H7: Positive emotional contagion will positively contribute to creativity H8: Negative emotional contagion will negatively contribute to creativit 3 Methodology 3.1 Data Collection The data from the survey was tested using partial least square (PLS) regression. The participants were those employees working in the ICT (Information and Communication Technology) companies in South Korea. We collected a total of 150 valid dataset, and the participants were paid for their efforts. To avoid selection bias, inconsistent or incomplete responses were eliminated from the dataset. Table 1 reports the sample characteristics. Table 1. Sample Characteristics Characteristics Frequency Percent Characteristics Frequency Percent Gender Tenure Male Less than 1 year Female years Age 3-5 years years years years years and over Job Position IT consultant Assistant System analyst Senior assistant Process analyst Manager IS maintenance Senior manager Others Executive Total Total ISBN:

5 3.2 Structural Model The path coefficients were computed by using SmartPLS software. R 2 values represent the amount of variance explained by the independent variables. We tested the structural model shown in Figure 1 by estimating the path coefficients and R 2 values. Table 2 shows the hypotheses test results. All of the R 2 values in this model are above the value of 10. As shown in Table 2, H1, H4, H5, H7 and H8 are supported. Table 2. Results of the Hypothesis Tests Hypotheses Path Coefficient (β) t-value H1 Reappraisal Positive Emotional Contagion ** Accepted H2 Reappraisal Negative Emotional Contagion Rejected H3 Suppression Positive Emotional Contagion Rejected H4 Suppression Negative Emotional Contagion ** Accepted H5 Reappraisal Creativity ** Accepted H6 Suppression Creativity Rejected H7 Positive Emotional Contagion Creativity ** Accepted H8 Negative Emotional Contagion Creativity * Accepted Note:*p <.1, **p <.05 Test 4 Concluding Remarks On the basis of our findings, we suggest that managers must pay attention to emotional reappraisal and positive emotional contagion to produce employee creativity. Moreover, they should care about emotional suppression to prevent negative emotional contagion to maintain employee creativity. Scholars and practitioners frequently suggested that emotionality would be the antithesis of rationality, and have frequently held a pejorative view of emotion. According to Ashforth and Humphrey (1995), this phenomenon could be bring about four institutionalized mechanisms (neutralizing, buffering, prescribing and normalizing emotion) for regulating the experience and expression of emotion in the workplace. Therefore, In contrast to this perspective, emotionality and rationality must be interpenetrated. Moreover, emotions should play the role of an integral and inseparable part of organizational life as a functional factor for the organization. Therefore, the role of everyday emotion in workplace should not be neglected. Managers should develop and maintain a positive emotional climate in their organizations in order to enhance organizational outcomes such as motivation, leadership, group performance and creativity. Acknowledgment: This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF- 2014S1A3A ). ISBN:

6 Reference: [1] Amabile, T. M., Barsade, S. G., Mueller, J. S., & Staw, B. M., Affect and creativity at work, Administrative Science Quarterly, pp. 50, , [2] Ashforth, B. E., & Humphrey, R. H., Emotion in the workplace: A reappraisal. Human Relations, pp. 48, , [3] Baas, M., De Dreu, C. K. W., & Nijstad, B. A., A meta-analysis of 25 years of mood-creativity research: Hedonic tone, activation, or regulatory focus?, Psychological Bulletin, pp. 134, , [4] Barsade, S. G. & Gibson, D. E., Why does affect matter in organizations?, Academy of Management Perspectives, pp. 21, 36-57, [5] Barsade, S. G., The ripple effect: Emotional contagion and its influence on group behavior, Administrative Science Quarterly, pp. 47, , [6 Grandey, A. A., Emotion regulation in the workplace: A new way to conceptualize emotional labor, Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, pp. 5, , [7] Gross, J., Antecedent- and responsefocused emotion regulation: Divergent consequences for experience, expression, and physiology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, pp. 74, , [8] Gross, J., The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review, Review of General Psychology, pp. 2, , [9] Gross, J.J. & John, O.P., Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, pp. 85, , [10] Gross, J.J., Emotion regulation: affective, cognitive, and social consequences, Psychophysiology, pp. 39, , [11] Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J., & Rapson, R. L., Primitive emotional contagion. In M. S. Clark (ed.), Review of Personality and Social Psychology: Emotion and Social Behavior, Newbury Park, CA: Sage, pp. 14, , [12] Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J., & Rapson, R. L., Emotional Contagion, New York: Cambridge University Press, [13] Sternberg, R.J. & Lubart, T.I., The concept of creativity: Prospects and paradigms, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999 ISBN: