Contextual Emotions in Organizations: A Latent Profile Analysis of Their Co-Occurrence and Their Effects on Employee Well-Being

TL;DR

This study identifies different emotional patterns in the workplace and how they affect employee well-being and health outcomes.

Contribution

The study introduces a new classification of workplace emotional dynamics using latent profile analysis and links them to employee outcomes.

Findings

Four distinct emotional profiles were identified among employees based on toxic and positive emotional dynamics.

Employees in dysfunctional emotional profiles reported worse health and lower job satisfaction.

The functional emotional profile was associated with the lowest risk of stress and highest satisfaction.

Abstract

Workplace contextual emotions are structured ways of emotionally thinking about specific cues in the context that employees share within their organization. These dynamics reflect how employees emotionally interpret and respond to organizational environments. Contextual emotions may shape working relationships into different types of toxic emotional dynamics (e.g., claiming, controlling, distrusting, provoking) or, conversely, positive emotional dynamics (i.e., exchanging), thus setting the emotional tone that affects employees’ actions and their level of comfort/discomfort. The present study uses latent profile analysis (LPA) to identify subpopulations of employees who may experience differing levels of both positive and negative emotional dynamics (i.e., different configurations of emotional patterns of workplace behavior). Moreover, it examines whether the emergent profiles predict work-related (i.e., job satisfaction, burnout) and health-related outcomes (i.e., sleep disturbances, physical and mental health). Using data from 801 Italian employees, we identified four latent profiles: “functional dynamics” (low toxic emotions and high exchange), “dialectical dynamics” (co-existence of medium toxic emotions and medium exchange), “mild dysfunctional dynamics” (moderately high toxic emotions and low exchange), and “highly dysfunctional dynamics” (extremely high toxic emotions and extremely low exchange). Moreover, employees in the dialectical, mild dysfunctional, and highly dysfunctional groups reported progressively higher levels of poor health outcomes and progressively lower levels of satisfaction, whereas the functional group was at low risk of stress and was the most satisfied group. The theoretical and practical implications of the LPA-classified emotional patterns of workplace behavior are discussed in light of the relevance of identifying vulnerable subpopulations of employees diversely exposed to toxic configurations of emotional/relational ambience.

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