Getting worse or getting better? Understanding the antecedents and consequences of emotion profile transitions during COVID-19-induced organizational crisis.

Abstract

While some organizations are thriving during the COVID-19 pandemic, many are experiencing a crisis—a threat to organizational longevity, time pressure, and inadequate resources. Building on prior work examining emotions during times of crisis and changes that people undergo during major life transitions, as well as media accounts suggesting that employees have had positive and negative emotions tied to aspects of working during COVID-19, we adopt a person-centric view to examine profiles of monthly emotions regarding organizational reopening. Additionally, we consider how employees transition from one profile of emotions to another across months. In so doing, we consider whether feelings of hope, gratitude, fear, and resentment co-occur for employees; how employees transition across profiles from one month to the next as a function of perceptions of organizational leaders’ trustworthiness and their handling of the COVID-19 crisis; and how changes in profile membership relate to employee well-being, work outcomes, and prevention behaviors to avoid contracting COVID-19. Using 1,422 total measurements from August 2020 to November 2020 from employees at a single university during two monthly transitions with significant crisis-related events (i.e., return to in-person teaching, students living on campus, announcement of pay cuts and furloughs, and the subsequent announcement that some of those conditions would change), we identified four profiles of monthly emotions, with perceived leader trustworthiness and handling of the pandemic being critical features of why employees belonged to different profiles between August–September and October–November. Further, we found implications of monthly transitions for work and COVID-related outcomes.

Organizational and vocational behavior in times of crisis: A review of empirical work undertaken during the COVID‐19 pandemic and introduction to the special issue

“…Research also investigated organizational factors, in particular, leader behaviors, that impacted employees' feelings during the pandemic crisis. In this vein, Slaughter et al (2021) found that perceived leader trustworthiness and effective handling of the pandemic in the work context were critical factors that supported employees to shift from negative to more positive emotional profiles during the crisis, indicated by higher levels of hope and gratitude, as well as reduced feelings of fear and resentment. In sum, this initial evidence indicates that exogenous crises, such as the COVID‐19 pandemic, will likely impact how individuals feel when at work and that leaders may help attenuate negative influences on employee emotions in this context.…”

Profiles of attribution for work–family conflict episodes and their relation to negative emotions

“…Indeed, even within attribution theories, although it is inferred that attributions should combine (e.g., Eid, 2001;Moors, 2007;Roseman et al, 1990;Roseman & Smith, 2001;Weiner, 1985Weiner, , 1986, how the attributions combine is yet to be theoretically or empirically delineated. Instead, following other within-person profile-based research (Diefendorff et al, 2019;Slaughter et al, 2021), we offer a few speculations as a "thought exercise" about which profiles might emerge. To guide our exercise, we reviewed studies that qualitatively coded the types of WIF/FIW episodes people experience (Rothstein et al, 2017) or used a qualitative checklist of features involved in WIF/FIW episodes (French, 2017) that could be attributed to our three attribution dimensions.…”

Surviving uncertainty: A dual-path model of personal initiative affecting graduate employability

“…Action theory also states that the task and social contexts in which an action is situated impose incentives or restrictions on the attainment of goals. University students are at a critical stage of the socialization process [49,50] and gradually learn to recognize the social and employment environment [51,52]. Therefore, How university students perceive the environment outside their universities can critically influence their information-seeking and decision-making behaviors on campus.…”