Proposal for EURAM 2006 Track
Submitted by: Andrea Fischbach, Isabell Welpe, Dieter Zapf, Tina Kiefer, and Anat Rafaeli
Emotion in organizations - what we know and where we want to go
Organizational behaviour research, theory, and practice have an increasing attention
on the topic of emotion. Former perceptions of organizations as “cool” and “rational” are
today replaced by the recognition and acceptance that emotions as an implicit part of
organizational life need to be dealt with. Accordingly, a growing number of emotion papers
and symposia at major organizational and management conferences reflect the status and
importance of this topic. At EURAM 2005 the first track on Emotion in Organizations was
successfully held.
For the coming EURAM 2006 we want again to propose an emotion track and
establish this track as an important platform in research and practice of emotion at the
workplace for exchanging current knowledge, discussing diverse perspectives and strategies,
as well as developing a research agenda for the future. We want to include empirical studies,
theoretical papers, as well as work-in-progress papers, presented and discussed at symposia,
paper and poster sessions, as well as workshops (including a doctoral student workshop).
These papers should focus on current issues in the field, including general emotion issues as
they can be related to organizational behaviour (e.g. varieties and functions of human emotion
in the organizational context, emotional contagion, distinguishing emotion, affect and mood),
measurement issues in organizational emotion research (e.g. event sampling and diary studies
in the research of emotion in the organizational context, physiological measurement methods
in the work context, scale developments for measuring emotion at work, qualitative
approaches in the study of emotion at work etc.), ethical issues (e.g. ethical dangers and
opportunities in emotion research and management practices), theoretical developments in the
field (e.g. affective event theory, emotional self-regulation), determinants and consequences
of specific emotions in the work context (e.g. emotions related to stress at work, health and
well-being, cross-cultural similarities and differences, organizational climate and leadership,
job characteristics, team work), emotion work/emotional labour (e.g. emotion work and
service delivery, customer satisfaction, and service workers’ health), individual differences in
experiencing, expressing and regulating emotions related to the work context (e.g. emotional
intelligence and work behaviour, emotions in the personnel selection process, gender issues),
management of emotions (e.g. management of destructive emotions at work, management of
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stress, training of emotion regulation strategies, emotional aspects of consumer behaviour,
international management issues).
We want to encourage scholars and practitioners of management, economy, and
psychology to join the track. We feel that the range of topics and approaches covered in the
proposed track will lead to an international exchange and an open, rich, diverse and
constructive discourse about emotions in organizations, what we know and where we want to
go in the future.
Key words: emotional behaviour, emotion work/ emotional labour, emotional intelligence,
emotion regulation in organizations
Andrea Fischbach (chair)
Juniorprofessorship Work and Organizational Psychology
Department I – Psychology
University of Trier, Germany
Trier 54286, Germany
Phone: (++49) 651 – 201 2035
Fax: (++49) 651 – 201 2029
Email: andrea.fischbach@uni-trier.de
Isabell Welpe
Ludwig-Maximilians-University
Klenzestrasse 65
D-80469 Munich, Germany
Phone: +49 89 202 38 774,
Mob: +49 179 125 5709
Fax: +49 89 87 62 65
Email: welpe@bwl.uni-muenchen.de
Dieter Zapf
Work and Organizational Psychology
Department of Psychology
Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Germany
2
Mertonstr. 17
Frankfurt 60054, Germany
Tel: ++49 (0) 69 – 798 - 22963
Fax: ++49 (0) 69 – 798 - 23847
Email: d.zapf@psych.uni-frankfurt.de
Tina Kiefer
Department of Organizational Psychology
Birkbeck College
University of London
Malet Street
London, WC1E 7HY, UK
Email: tina.kiefer@org-psych.bbk.ac.uk
Anat Rafaeli
William Davidson Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management
Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
Technion City, Haifa 32000
Israel
Tel: ++(972-4) 829-4421
FAX: ++(972-4) 829-5688
Email: AnatR@ie.technion.ac.il
Andrea Fischbach is juniorprofessor of work- and organizational psychology at TrierUniversity, Germany. She received her diploma (Dipl.-Psych.) 1999 in Psychology from
Goethe-University, Frankfurt, Germany and her PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) 2003 in work- and
organizational psychology at Georg-August-University, Göttingen, Germany. Her research is
focused on emotional labor/emotion work and cross-cultural psychology. She is especially
interested in how cultural, organizational, and personal factors influence service-interactions,
and in the consequences of emotional demands on service worker, customer, and service
organizations.
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Isbell M. Welpe studied business at the University of Munich (Diploma in 1999) and at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, USA (1998/1999). From September 1999
until 2000 she studied at the European Institute of the London School of Economics. In 2003
she finished a PhD on High Technology Entrepreneurship in which she conducted a large
empirical study on the cooperation between Venture Capital Firm and technology venture.
She has been a visiting professor at the Keck Graduate Institute and a postdoctoral fellow at
the Carlson School of Business at the University of Minnesota. She is currently as assistant
professor (Habilitandin) at the Munich Business School at the Ludwig-Maximilian-University
in Munich, Germany.
Dieter Zapf is professor of work- and organizational psychology at Johann Wolfgang GoetheUniversity, Frankfurt, Germany. He studied psychology and theology in Neuendettelsau,
Erlangen, Marburg, and Berlin, Germany. He received his diploma (Dipl.-Psych.) 1980 from
Free University Berlin, Germany, his theological exam 1983 from Ansbach, Germany, and his
PhD 1988 from Free University Berlin, Germany. He received his habilitation 1993 from
Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany. His research interests focus on psychological
stress at work, stress-oriented job analysis, mobbing (bullying), emotion work, errors at work,
and action theory.
Tina Kiefer is currently Senior Visiting Research Scholar at the Department of Organizational
Psychology at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. Before embarking on her 3-year
scholarship, which she spent at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver) and at
Birkbeck College (University of London), she was a lecturer in Organizational Psychology at
the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. She studied applied psychology and communication
sciences (lic.phil.) in Fribourg (Switzerland) and received her PhD (Dr. phil.) in 1996 from
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the same university. In her research she focuses on emotion at work, especially in the context
of ongoing organizational change, on hassle, and more recently on toxic emotions at work.
Anat Rafaeli received her BA from Haifa University. She received an MA and PhD in
Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the Ohio State University. Upon graduation
she was a visiting scholar at Stanford University in the Department of Industrial Engineering,
and in 1985 she joined the faculty of the school of business administration of the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem where she was the chair of the organizational behavior program.
During her tenure at the Hebrew University she spent three years as a visiting professor at the
University of Michigan both in the department of organizational psychology and in the
organizational behavior program of the business school. In 1998 she joined the Faculty of
Industrial Engineering and Management of the Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology, as
an associate professor of organizational behavior. She is interested in emotional and symbolic
self-presentation in organizations especially as they occur in service interaction.
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