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‘I feel bad’, ‘We feel good’?—Emotions as a Driver for Personal and Organizational Identity and Organizational Identification as a Resource for Serving Unfriendly Customers
Author(s) -
Wegge Jürgen,
Schuh Sebastian C.,
Dick Rolf
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
stress and health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.009
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1532-2998
pISSN - 1532-3005
DOI - 10.1002/smi.1412
Subject(s) - organizational identification , psychology , social psychology , cognitive dissonance , salience (neuroscience) , organizational identity , coping (psychology) , organizational commitment , social identity theory , impression management , cognitive psychology , clinical psychology , social group
The social identity approach is used to demonstrate how personal and organizational identity is affected by emotions at work and that organizational identification can function as a valuable resource in coping with stressors. We analysed data from an experiment with 96 call centre agents to investigate relationships between positive and negative emotions, identification and strain. Positive and negative emotions were induced by simulated customers who either behaved in a friendly or a rude way. Organizational identification was assessed with a questionnaire, and personal identity salience was measured using video data by counting how often agents said ‘I’ during conversations. Strain was measured through self‐reports of emotional dissonance and by assessing immunoglobulin A (IgA) concentration in participants' saliva. Results showed that organizational identification was higher in conditions with positive emotions and was reduced by the induction of negative emotions. Moreover, organizational identification functioned as a buffer against stress: emotional dissonance generally was lower for participants with high organizational identification; IgA levels were negatively associated with organizational identification when agents communicated with unfriendly customers. Conversely, personal identity salience was induced by negative emotions and did not make a positive contribution to the coping process. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.