Emotions play a substantial role in social contexts. Yet, while research in psychology has studied emotions for many years,
it has treated emotions as individual level constructs, mainly divorced from organizational and societal contexts (Fineman,
2004; Haidt, 2012).
However, there is a growing stream of organizational research that conceptualizes emotions in social context (e.g., Voronov
& Vince, 2012; Creed et al., 2014; Huy et al., 2014; Massa et al., 2017; Toubiana & Zietsma, 2017; Wright et al., 2017; Fotaki
et al., 2012; Thompson & Willmott, 2016) and studies emotions as social (“emotions that pertain to the state of social relations”, Creed et al., 2014: 276) and relational (“conscious and unconscious emotional levels of connection that exist between and shape selves and others, people and systems”,
French & Vince, 1999: 7).
In this SWG 13, we aim to build on this work and generate scholarly insights into emotional dynamics within social contexts, as well as how individual and collective emotional dynamics contribute to structure, agency, power
and change.
The role of emotions in social contexts addresses a number of key themes that will be at the center of the four-year program
of SWG 13:
-
The role of distinct social emotions in organizations and institutions
-
The social potency and interplay of emotions and power in the functioning of collective and group emotions within political
and social contexts (Thompson & Willmott, 2016)