UNIVERSITY OF VAASA FACULTY OF BUSINESS STUDIES DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT Johanna Harju EMOTIONS AND MOOD IN A WORKGROUP Master’s Thesis in Management and Organizations VAASA 2007 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES 5 ABSTRACT 7 1. INTRODUCTION 8 1.1. The Nature of the Study 10 1.2. Definition of the Research Problem 11 1.3 The Structure of the Study 12 2. DEFINING THE MAIN TERMINOLOGY 14 2.1 Affect 14 2.2 Mood 15 2.3 Discrete Emotions 16 2.4 Emotions in Organizational Studies 18 2.5 The Group 19 3. METHODOLOGY 21 3.1 Grounded theory –method 21 3.2 The Surroundings for the Research 23 3.3 The interviewees 24 3.4 The Structure of the Interviews 25 3.5 Data analysis 27 4. THE RESULTS 29 4.1 The Themes 30 4.1.1 Emotions and mood 30 4.1.2 Social effect 34 4.1.3 Conflicts 43 4.1.4 The Work 47 2 3 4.1.5 Authority and feedback 49 4.2 The Concept 52 4.2.1 The Intrapersonal Concept 53 4.2.2 The Interpersonal Concept 54 4.2.3 The Organizational Concept 54 4.3 Response attitudes 55 4.3.1 Positive response 57 4.3.2 Negative response 58 4.3.3 Neutral response 60 4.4 Comparison of the Groups 60 4.6 The Research Diary 62 4.7 Summary 63 5. COMPARISON WITH THE LITERATURE 65 5.1 Emotions in Organizations 66 5.1.1 Challenges in Emotions in Organization Research 67 5.2 Affect in Organization 69 5.3 Emotional Intelligence 71 5.4 Emotion Regulation and Emotional Labor 73 5.5 Emotional Contagion and Collective Affect 77 5.6 Positive and Negative Affect 81 5.7 Affects relation to Outcome and Performance 83 5.8 The Combined Framework 85 6. CONCLUSION 87 6.1 Discussion 89 6.2 Waking up the awareness 91 6.3 Limitation for the Study 92 6.4 Contribution of the Study 93 6.5 Indications for Future Research 96 REFERENCES 98 4 5 LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Tables Table 1. Examples of Emotions 17 Table 2. The company’s age structure 23 Table 3. The Structure of the Interviewed Groups 25 Table 4. The Various Answers 39 Table 5. Response Attitudes 57 Table 6. The summary of the results 64 Table 7. The Model of affect 70 Table 8. The affective terms combined with the results 86 Table 9. The Johari Window Model 90 Figures Figure 1. Focusing on Team Basics 20 Figure 2. The Communication in Conflicts (Situation 1). 45 Figure 3. The Communication in Conflicts (Situation 2) 46 Figure 4. The work division of the group 49 Figure 5. Dividing the answers: Interpersonal, Intrapersonal and Organizational 53 Figure 6. Response attitudes 56 Figure 7. Conceptualizing Emotional Intelligence 72 Figure 8. The process model of emotion regulation 76 Figure 9. A model of group emotional contagion 78 Figure 10. Moods and emotions in small groups and work teams 80 6 7 _____________________________________________________________________ UNIVERSITY OF VAASA Faculty of Business Studies Author: Johanna Harju Topic of the Thesis Emotions and Mood in a Workgroup Name of the Supervisor Henrik Gahmberg Degree: Master of Science in Economics and Business Administration Major Subject: Management and Organizations Line: Human Resource Management Year of Entering the University: 2002 Year of Completing the Thesis: 2007 Pages: 101 _____________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT This thesis studies the meanings of emotions and mood in a work group. The objective is to understand their roles in everyday working life and how they might affect the employees. In the beginning of the research no assumptions about the results were made. The idea was simply to “dive in” to the phenomena and receive what is to be found. The research was carried out in an international company, where two teams were interviewed in winter 2006-2007. The pilot team was multicultural and the comparison team, domestic. Both teams are formed quite recently and contain people of different ages and with different backgrounds. The methodology of the study is qualitative and it was conducted by following the structure of the grounded theory–method. The data was collected with open interviews and diaries. The attempt was not to influence the interviewees, but to let them talk freely about emotions, moods and matters that have meaning for them at work and at home. After each interview the data was coded and analyzed to give a guideline for the next interview. This way all the discussed themes came directly from the interviewees and not from the interviewer. After the interviews, a more careful analyze was made and the main results were found. It was obvious that emotions and mood have a significant role in the social life of the organization. They seem to affect the mood of other team members and moreover the work itself. From the rich data of the interviews more interesting elements were found explaining how different matters affect different people in dissimilar ways. The results from the two teams did not differ strongly from each other, only the intensity of their attitudes diverged. The results can be eventually combined together with the existing literature, which gathers together the most important emotion studies in organizations. Supporting findings could be covered from the literature and thus it could be seen that this thesis gives confirmation to the previous studies. The contribution of this study is that it provides tools for organizations, which can help waking up the awareness inside the teams, making the team members to understand each other better and make them want a change for the better. ______________________________________________________________________ KEYWORDS: Affect, mood, emotions, group 8 9 1. INTRODUCTION When people talk about work, they often talk about emotions. People discuss, for instance, how the work or a certain situation has felt. Although the phenomenon itself is constantly present and discussed in everyday working life, in the organizational studies organizations have often been presented as rational enterprises, where people are capable to think and act rationally, to maximize their goals which are set by the company (Fineman 2000: 10). Emotions are a very intimate part of a person and often connected to others in social contexts, from which one of the most powerful is the working organization. When spending 1/3 of the day at work, much of a person’s social and emotional life is organizational (Rafaeli & Worline 2001: 95). People working in organizations operate to achieve common goals. Organizations can be seen as social systems, where many environmental factors affect them and the employees. However, it can be seen as the truth that in a group of people working together, issues start to arise in different levels. Managers and consults are directed to understand better personal, interpersonal, group and organizational related issues that are considered to be a part of every day life in organizations. The idea has not been to eliminate the problems but to manage them better (French et al. 1985: 11–25). As a matter of fact, the interest towards emotions is growing in organizations. Job announcements emphasize team work and getting along with people, as well as requiring enough emotional intelligence to understand the importance of the positive attitudes. Researchers have always been interested in human behaviour and they have studied emotions in different contexts, for example as an individual or cultural phenomenon. The role of emotions has still been traditionally ignored in the organization research. For people working in organizations, it is nothing new that emotions and mood might affect workers. Hence, it feels reasonable to explore the phenomena through a scientific point of view and try to prove the significance of emotions and mood, which has still not been done completely (Fineman 2000: 10–11). People bring their values, and attitudes and ways of behaving to work. The content of emotions is rather complex to study because everybody is different. The subject is very personal and therefore delicate. Work relationships differ from personal ones and 10 it makes people to experience the emotions in different ways (Fineman 2000: 65). The challenging character of this particular area and the need for more studying gives the research delectable settings. Further investigation is needed for broadening the vocabulary of emotions in organizations. 1.1. The Nature of the Study Researches have been interested in human behavior in organizations for decades. Organizational behavior research is interested in analyzing and understanding the people’s attitudes, feelings, perceptions, motives and behavior in an organizational background. The field of study is founded on research, observation and theory. Improving individual and organizational performance and increasing participants satisfaction is defined as its primary goals. Ways to achieve them can be done by understanding, predicting and influencing human behavior in organizations (French et al. 1985: 14). During past decades, the approach to work settings has been rather rational and only recently the meaning of emotions has been taken into consideration. Emotions in organizations are a relatively young study field but there are encouraging results that emotions do have an effect on behavior in organizational context. Since the late 1980’s researcher have made epoch-making findings in the area in question. The intriguing environment gives a new challenge for emotional studies because the human relationships at work create a unique sentimental context. (Fineman 2000: 10– 11, 65). While the field of study is fresh, the most valuable material was found from various articles in academic journals from which many have been published in the recent years. Emotions in organizations –studies are connected to several fields of research and usually they have been analyzed as a biological or psychological phenomenon, although later they have been taken under the organizational studies (Briner 1999: 324–329). This study is interested only in the psychological affect of the emotions and mood in an organizational context. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of the subject, some of the articles, such as Fredrickson 1998, 2001 and 2005 are from psychological journals. 11 The idea of this research was to go open-minded into the arena of emotions and explore the meanings of the humans’ inner world. The most preferable way to discover this kind of ground is to use qualitative methods. Going open minded to the phenomenon can be seen as the best approach when exploring a context, where there is still no commonly approved theory. Studying the particular field of emotions, the request is not to let the methodology (such as questionnaires or structured interview) interfere the answers but to let the data come by itself. For these reasons grounded theory –method was used to implement the study. The methodology was originally developed to the needs of sociologist but later on it has become in common use (Glaser & Strauss 1967). Why study emotions in an organization or in a workgroup? Because when people work with matters that mean something to them and to their organizational performance, strong affective feelings are present. Some researchers imply that personal feelings are present in every situation when people encounter in meetings or work projects, or in the relationships individuals hold in every day working life (Barsade & Gibson 2007: 36). People bring organizations to life and therefore, it is important to be aware what kind of elements affect the life inside the organizations. The study will be conducted by studying two different teams in an international company, which identity will not be revealed to protect the identities of the interviewees. This thesis concentrates mainly on emotions and mood in a workgroup but it is also open to the organizational view. Workgroup or a team are seen as the immediate surroundings where people work in. The two teams are compared with each other to find out the group’s possible effect on emotions. The first group is multicultural containing nine people from Finland, Italy, Greece and Kenya. The other team has six members and is entirely domestic. 1.2. Definition of the Research Problem The purpose of this study is to find out what kind of emotions there are in a workgroup and which elements affect workers’ moods. The first purpose is to learn how people feel in the chosen organization and what influences those sentiments. Through that, it might be possible to learn to understand emotions and the different people working in workgroups as well as to learn more about group dynamics. If one 12 knows what happens inside an employee’s mind, it can perhaps give managers tools with which to provide their workers better. How much influence does the person’s private life have at work? This study will hopefully give an answer to that question. It will also give important knowledge of human behaviour, emotions, moods and attitudes; the inner world of a person. Emotions as a notion are closely related to the concept of mood. Still they are seen as two different elements and studied separately if possible. The defined research question of this study is: How do emotions and mood affect in a workgroup? Due to the fact that the query is fairly intricate, the following questions will be presented. • What kind of emotions there are in a workgroup and how do they show? • Which elements have an effect on emotions and mood? The main questions are rather simple but no further assumptions were made at the beginning of the study to avoid any kind of guidance. As mentioned earlier, the idea was to face the phenomena of emotions and moods open-minded and therefore it was not preferable to make too precise research definitions. The main idea was to find and learn about matters related to work atmosphere, with the scope of emotions and mood. How worker’s emotions or mood might affect and how they influence colleagues is also taken into consideration. The target was to find implements for improving the comprehension of the meaning of emotions and mood at work. 1.3 The Structure of the Study The first chapter presents the background information of the study by introducing the subject and the nature of the study. It also defines the research problem more specifically. The second chapter opens up the main definitions that are important for the study. Affect, mood, emotions and a group are specified briefly. A short look at the background history of emotions in organization -studies is also made. In chapter three the methodology and the process of data collection are demonstrated. The target company of the research is presented giving the needed demographical information. The two interviewed teams are introduced, as well as the collection of the 13 empirical data through open interviews and personal diary is explained. In the end of the chapter three, the data analyzing processes are described. In chapter four the results of the study are presented. The findings are based fully on the interviews and put together with a careful open-minded coding and analyzed with a great attempt not to influence on the results. First, the main findings are written out by dividing them into six main themes. After that the findings will be divided to three levels: intrapersonal, interpersonal and organizational. The different response attitudes are presented and the comparisons between the two groups are made. Finally, essential parts of the researcher’s diary will be proposed. In chapter five the results are combined together with the previous studies. The literature was not examined before the interviews so that they would not guide the interviewer. First the previous studies, which support the empirical findings, are presented. Emotions in organization studies are a young field even though so far there has been supporting results that emotions do affect in different levels of organization. A framework that combines the literature and the main research findings is presented in subchapter 5.8. The final chapter six discusses the conclusions. It will show how the research influenced the teams. It will also take into notion the limitations of the study as well as the contribution to the working ambient and the discipline. In conclusion, indications for the future research will be made. 14 2. DEFINING THE MAIN TERMINOLOGY This study focuses on the emotional field in organizations and it is seen essential to define the traditional terms relating to the emotional scope. Affects, moods and emotions are defined and the relationships between the three are examined. In the end of this chapter, also the meaning of the group will be discussed. Although emotions touch several fields of study, this research is interested in emotions only as a psychological element in organizations and it will not discuss their biological meanings. People experience pleasant and unpleasant emotions and moods in both private and social contexts. They express a variety of positive and negative sentiments and attitudes that can be evaluated (Fredrickson & Losada 2005: 678). To understand the wide and challenging field of research, it is central to distinguish and clarify the three elements, which build the concept. During the interviews was noticed that differentiating moods and emotions was troublesome. Also in literature the three definitions are often presented as each other’s synonyms (Batson et al. 1992: 295). Although the research in question concentrates mainly in moods and emotions, they both involve affective experiences. Even if all elements, including affect, are distinguished, they all share some common features. For example they can all be described as states involving transient psychological experiences. Moreover, they all share a general subjective (feeling) element and are accompanied by psychological reactions. Characteristics to these states are that they have an evaluative component to them and some states are preferred over others (Cropanzano et al. 2003: 834–835). 2.1 Affect “Research on affective structure is like a tapestry that is not yet completed.” (Cropanzano et al. 2003: 852) Recently the researchers’ interest has turned to studying affect, but there are several debates concerning the structure of the affect. Traditionally the term affect has been 15 used as an umbrella concept covering feeling states such as emotions and moods; dispositional affects, meta-emotional varieties as well as the various feeling traits such as positive and negative affectivity (Barsade & Gibson 2007: 37–38). This sub-chapter presents affects only shortly, giving more detailed definitions in chapter five. According to Batson et al. (1992: 298), affect is the most primitive of the three definitions. It is also more general than moods or emotions. The tone of the affect varies between positive and negative and it has different levels of intensity. Affect can be seen as a reaction to a present situation that has a meaning for person’s mood. Affects seem to reveal person’s preferences showing what the person values over another. A positive affect generates when a less valued state transforms into a more valued way of being. A negative affect generates the opposite reaction when a preferred state turns into a less valuable. The intensity the affect is experienced depends on the value’s importance. 2.2 Mood The consequences of affects and moods differ from each other, even if it can be difficult for people to separate them. Negative affects are likely to motivate people’s actions, where the positive affect is something to be enjoyed. Negative or positive moods will set the person to believe that the actions causing the mood are likely to cause pain or pleasure (Batson et al. 1992: 300–301). Moods can be defined as affective experiences, disconnected from their ultimate causes. In other words, they exist without a specific object or a defining event. This is also the biggest cause that separates moods from emotions, which are always objected to specific targets. (Cropanzano et al. 2003: 835). The change in expectation, whether the future state will be positive or negative, together with affection in the present situation, outline the mood. A Mood is said to be a specific kind of affective state and one of its characteristics is temporality. The state can last from short moments to weeks (Batson et al. 1992: 299). A positive or a negative affect can change the mood despite the change in the future expectations, if the person believes she1 is having her lucky day, or on the contrary 1 “She” will be used as the main personal pronoun in this thesis for clarifying the writing. It was chosen over “he”, as most of the interviewees in this particular study were women. 16 one of those days. Negative affect does not necessarily inflict bad mood and neither is positive affect always a source of positive mood. A person can even encounter an intense affect without any changes in the mood. It is the temporary change in the future expectations that alters the mood. People’s presumptions about the future can also be based on surreal believes and depend on the personality (Batson et al. 1992: 300). 2.3 Discrete Emotions This chapter will present the discrete emotions in a “nut shell”. Fineman (2006: 675– 676) defines emotions as both a personal and organizational recourse, through which different “rationalities” and relationships are interpreted, contested and formed. Emotions are powerfully shaped by social learning, cultural protocols, social structures and politics and they are often regulated through feeling rules and emotion display. The field of emotions is complex and there is not any commonly accepted definition. However, different scholars, with various perspectives, have focused to study this difficult area. There is an ongoing debate of how many discrete emotions do exist. According to Goleman (1995: 331–332), there can be hundreds of them along with their blends, variations, mutations and nuances, even so many that we don’t have names for them all. The researcher continues quoting Paul Ekman, implying that there are four universal emotions: fear, anger, sadness and enjoyment, which are recognized in all cultures around the world through facial expressions. Any emotion can be experienced and assessed in a positive or negative way, even with a mix of both (Fineman 2006: 691). Often in the literature, emotions are divided in about fifteen basic varieties. Rather than concentrating on each type, they can be easily and efficiently studied as an opposition between negative and positive tone (Plutchik & Kellerman 1980: 198–203). Usually the emotions are divided into “basic” or primary emotions such as joy, love, anger, fear, disgust and surprise (Barsade & Gibson 2007: 37). Cropanzano et al. (2003: 835) suggests that the clearest definition for emotions is that they have an object of interest, meaning that they are always about something or someone. For example you can be angry at your husband or you can be proud of your work. Briner 17 (1999) presents in Table 1 an example list of emotions which includes 22 main emotions. Table 1. Examples of Emotions (Briner 1999: 327 adapted from Ortony, Clore & Collins 1998) Pride Self reproach (embarrassment, guilt, shame) Appreciation (admiration, respect) Reproach of others (contempt, disdain, appalled) Gratitude (feeling indebted, thankful) Anger (annoyance, fury, outraged) Gratification (self-satisfied, smug) Remorse (self-anger, penitent) Joy (delighted, cheerful, joyful) Distress (distraught, uneasy, shock, misery) Happy-for (pleased-for, delighted-for) Sorry-for (compassion, pity, sympathy) Resentment (envy, jealousy) Gloating (gloating, schadenfreude) Hope (looking forward-to, anticipatory excitement) Fear (apprehension, anxious, worried, scared) Satisfaction (gratification, hopes-realized) Fears-confirmed (worst fears-realized) Relief Disappointment (dashed-hopes, despair) Liking (affection, adoration, attracted-to, love) Disliking (detest, hate, loathe, perelled-by) The Merriam – Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (2003: 408) presents emotions as affective aspects of consciousness. According to it, emotion is a conscious mental reaction experienced as strong feeling and directed towards a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioural changes in the body. In the dictionary, emotion is considered as a synonym for feeling, but researches state that the two concepts are too different to be used as synonyms in research. As moods, also emotions contain tone and intensity. Whereas the mood reflects the negative or positive changes in the future, emotion relates to person’s goals and values in the present. Elements people value can be both abstract and concrete. They can be genetically based, environmentally related or learned through classical or operant 18 conditioning. Which are the personal values is highly subjective. They change among people, because everyone is unique. Especially the socials backgrounds of each person are very diverse and therefore, also the culture and ideas she has been exposed to, can vary. Emotions can be considered as reactions to a certain change in a relationship to a specific situation. For example, if someone has succeeded with a long term project, she is likely to feel joy. Also to a person who has been successful in a smaller task, the success might create a positive affect and she too might feel pleasure. How the achievements affect the future orientation can be noticed through the change in mood. Emotions reflect the existence of a specific goal or a perceived change in the individual relation to a particular goal in the future (Batson et al. 1992: 301–303). The biggest difference, which distinguishes emotions from moods and affects, is the fact that emotions are always reactions to something or someone. On the contrary, moods lack in defining the event or the object, meaning that the reason behind the mood may not be clear for the person. According to Cropanzano et al. (2003: 836), moods are affective experiences disconnected from their proximate causes. Unlike mood, emotion is usually focused on a specific target and is realized by the perceiver. Discrete emotions like joy or sadness are usually rather intensive but have a brief duration and they can sometimes turn into moods (Barsade & Gibson 2007: 38). 2.4 Emotions in Organizational Studies The roots of organizational studies are at the beginning of the twentieth Century when the approach was still rather scientific. The interest was first in the internal structure of companies; how different units were organized, how they were linked together and how people behaved in them. Today it is considered important to give support, build trust, accept differences, and encourage workers to be more self-acting. Despite of the softer approach towards the working life, researchers and scholars have generally ignored the field of emotions in organizations although they are actually an essential and inseparable part of everyday working life. Moreover, emotions have been considered as the antithesis of rationality (Ashforth & Humbrey 1995: 106). In practice, the values of the individuals have been studied through purely rational 19 methods such as IQ measurements which were developed to support the ideals of the Western world (Goleman 1995: 4). Studying emotions has a long history in psychology. On the other hand, as already pointed out before, it has been mistreated in organisational practise. In fact, there has even been a clear attempt to separate emotions from organisations. The concept of the company needs trimming, as does the term control and if achieving total power or taking over altogether is the target, emotion can cause problems with its spontaneous and causal characteristics (Rafaeli & Worline 2001: 98). Furthermore, the focus of the previous studies has rather been in the emotional labour and in the way the emotions are expressed in service situations. How emotions are experienced or felt is left with smaller attention (Briner 1999: 322). The position of emotional studies began to change slowly in the late 1980’s when the research started expand after the publications of Hochschild (1983), about emotional labour, and Rafaeli’s and Sutton’s (1989) investigations, about emotional contagious. Despite of the arising interest in the 1980’s, emotion studies continued to be slightly ignored and reached to have only a little impact on the organizational research in the next decade. In the beginning of the new century the situation started to change spectacularly and researchers are nowadays exploring how workers think and feel in organizations, publishing constantly fresh information about the role and the effects of emotions in organizations (Askanasy 2002:14 –16). Today the question is no longer whether emotions and mood have an effect on organizations but rather why they affect and how they influence different areas of the working environment. The interest towards the field of affect, mood and emotions is growing with an impressive speed. Due to the fact that the field of investigation is still relatively young, researchers are encouraging other colleagues to study the area more deeply, aiming to establish the role of emotions. 2.5 The Group In most of the working places, employees work together or have at least some kind of interaction with other co-workers and often also with customers or vendors. For that reason, there has been a remarkable amount of research related to group work, aiming 20 to understand the structure and performance of small operational groups and teams, that is, how the members are behaving in them and influencing within. The study approach to teams has traditionally sided the role of emotions but recently it has been taken into a consideration. Nowadays, teams are the basic units of performance in many organizations. They melt together abilities, experiences, and insights of many different people (Katzenbach & Smith 1998:27). “A group is a number of persons who, for at least a brief period of time, have some psychological and/or task interdependency, which includes interaction with each other in face-to-face situation.” Groups in organizations can be divided into two different kinds: formal and informal. Formal groups are approved by the hierarchy and they have particular tasks to perform. Informal groups are formed voluntarily by the employees themselves. A reason to create such a group can be the similarity of work, mutual attraction and a common need of fulfillment or even a mixture of all the above (French et al. 1985: 228–230). Problem solving Technical/ Function Interpersonal Mutual Small number Of people Individual Specific goals Common approach Meaningful purpose COMMITMENT PERFORMANCE RESULTS COLLECTIVE WORK PRODUCTS PERSONAL GROWTH Figure 1. Focusing on Team Basics (Katzenbach & Smith1998:8) 21 3. METHODOLOGY This chapter describes the methodology used in the research. The chapter will also introduce the interviewees and the organizational surroundings where the interviews were implemented. The end of the chapter three illustrates step by step the complete analyzing process, explaining how the final results were found through careful coding with a help of NVivo software program. The results will be presented in the next chapter. The first and main idea was to understand emotions and mood in organizations and the qualitative method was chosen for the research method. It is commonly used when studying people’s lives, stories and behavior. The purpose of a qualitative method is to describe the properties and qualities of the researched phenomenon. In qualitative research every studied case is unique and is seen to have meaning for the result (Strauss & Gorbin 1990: 17–19). Due to the fact that the subject of this thesis is very personal, it was seen best to use qualitative methods when collecting the data. Fineman (2000: 13) warns that using familiar and commonly accepted methods (such as questionnaire, interview or psychological test) when studying emotions, it can determine the shape of the subject rather than let the subject determine the used method. The grounded theory -method is considered to fulfill these needs and it was used to carry out the research. The method gives plenty of rope to the researcher to freely dive in the phenomenon of emotions. 3.1 Grounded theory –method Grounded theory method is a qualitative approach that was originally developed by two sociologists Glaser and Strauss (1967) in the late 1960’s. While the most common research methods build the research on theory, the purpose of the grounded theory is rather to build theory of the examined phenomenon. Give support to an already existing theory or even build a new theory are the purposes of this research. According to Glaser and Strauss (1990: 23–28), theory building can be done by set of systematical procedures to develop theory from the existing phenomenon. In the end the theory is generated from systematical data collection and careful coding of data. 22 The key is to understand the researched phenomenon and to find generalizations without influencing the process or the results. Metsämuuronen (2006: 98–99) says that qualitative research is normally done in two different ways: theory-based and data-based research. The theory-based one is a more traditional way to perform a research where the aim is to connect the theory, formed from the literature, to the reality. Data-based research in its fundaments means letting the data speak for itself and to create the theory from the actual phenomenon. Grounded Theory –method presents the second possibility. The researcher, using the grounded theory method, needs to be open and flexible in front of the phenomenon. When the idea is to discover and develop new, certain amount of creativity is also needed (Strauss & Corbin 1990: 24–28). The researcher must be aware not to guide the interviewees because that might interfere with the results. Therefore, the researchers also warn not to examine the existing literature too carefully beforehand. On the contrary, the examination of technical literature should be done after the coding if it is relevant to find possible relationships between the discovered data and the already existing literature (Strauss & Corbin 1990: 48–50). Fineman emphasizes that when studying emotions the researcher needs to have certain qualities, such as being agile and sensitive and having a capacity to report imaginatively (Fineman 2000: 14–15). The reason why Grounded theory -method was chosen to conduct the research was, first of all, because there is still no solid theory about emotions and how they affect in organizations. Only in the past decades the value of emotions at work has started to be recognized. Second, the subject as a concept is very unique and therefore it did not feel correct to study emotions with a specific framework. It was important to do the research with an open mind and without trying to influence the interviewees or explored results even if, in theory, it is impossible not to have any influence at all. That being the case, no assumptions about the outcome were made in the beginning of the research. That again made the research challenging when there was no particular idea what should be found. The main purpose was to look for elements that could have an effect on emotions and mood in a working group. The wish, like in general in the grounded theory –method, was ultimately relate the outcome with those of the other researches in the academic area. 23 3.2 The Surroundings for the Research The research data was collected by interviewing two groups in the target company during the winter 2006-2007. The place of the interviews was a young and dynamic business-oriented organization, which serves several business units in a unified way and where the processes are standardized and performance is measured. The working ambient is international and the services are done mainly for subsidiary customers in other European countries. The work is done in work groups in a way that one specific group concentrates on customer services for one certain country or a couple of countries. Knowing that the team concept is a significantly new issue in the organization in question, the company has put a lot of effort in forming the group work. It has provided external, a one year long team training for the employees and the groups are encouraged to spend time together in occasional team lunches and team meetings. The future aim is that the performance measurements will be done as groups instead of on individual level. Table 2. The company’s age structure 0 5 10 15 20 25 Number of Workers -25 26-30 31-35 36-40 41-45 46-50 50+ The Age Group The Age Structure % Years The service unit has faced a rapid change during its lifespan. In three years the department has grown from 18 persons to 83. From the department’s workers, 77 % 24 are women and 23 % are men. The age structure divides so that over 60 % of the workers are 30 years old, or younger. The amount of over 50 year old employees is only 9, 6 % (Table 2). Each group has a team leader who was selected in October 2006. Katzenbach & Smith (1998: 131) describe a team leader as person who, like all the members in the team, does the real work herself. Her task is to clarify the purposes and goals as well as to build commitment and self-confidence among the other members. She should strengthen the team’s collective skills and approaches, by removing externally set obstacles, and creating opportunities for others. In the target organization team leaders come from inside the team. Employees were able to apply for the post and they were chosen by their superiors. Team leaders work as the superiors of the group; taking care of smaller managerial tasks, such as drafting the working contracts and keeping track with the members’ absences and holidays. She is also in contact with the higher superior. Each team works individually in charge of the team leader. The groups arrange team meetings approximately once a week and they have the possibility to have a team lunch outside the office once a month. 3.3 The interviewees The research began with interviewing the pilot group that will be called the Foreign group. The Foreign group had ten members from which eight were interviewed. The employees were all different ages and had different backgrounds. The group was formed in February 2006 and it consisted of four men and six women from four different countries: Finland, Greece, Kenya and Italy. The Foreign group worked sitting close together in the department and occasionally they also spent some time together outside the office. The team was chosen for this research because of the different nationalities. The second group, which will be called the Domestic group, was a team including six persons, of which five were women. All of the members of the group were Finnish at the moment of the interviews. The group was formed in July 2006 and the structure of the group has changed several times when new employees have come to join the group or some have been assigned to other tasks. The Domestic group was chosen to give comparison to the pilot group, as it was otherwise seen as the most similar to the 25 Foreign group from all the other 7 of the office. Unlike the Foreign group, the members of the Domestic one sat in two different places in the department. Inside both groups, the work was divided into three or four specific parts, which were taken care of by different performers. The tasks were therefore not entirely similar to everybody. Table 3. The Structure of the Interviewed Groups Group Gender Age Country Working in the Team Foreign Group 6 Female 4 Men From 22 years to 50 + years Finland, Italy, Greece, Kenya From 3 months to 2 years Work split: Task A: 3 people Task B: 1 person Task C: 5 people Task D: 1 person Domestic Group 5 Female 1 Man From 23 years to 50 years Finland From 3 months to over 2 years Work split: Task A: 2 people Task B: 3 person Task C: 1 person who helps B Because of the delicate nature of this research, no further information about the interviewees will be given to protect their privacy. Neither is the organization’s identity seen to have an impact on the results. It should also be mentioned that the interviewer herself works part-time in the Foreign Group. It was not seen to have any kind of influence on the results. Rather it gave some important extra information about the importance of understanding emotions in organizations and as well as provided extra knowledge of the communication inside the studied groups. 3.4 The Structure of the Interviews Before starting the interviews, all the participants were prepared with some basic information about the research and its goals. Everyone was asked to give their approval to use their conversations in the research. The subject was introduced to the participants beforehand, being careful not to lead them in anyways at this point. The 26 topic of the interviews was told to the participants and this way, the workers were able to think about certain arguments in advance. The discussions started with the first interview where the woman was given a chance to simply talk freely about the subject “emotions and mood at work”. The topic was written in a paper and placed in the middle of the table to make sure the interviewee concentrated and also remained in the given area. No further questions were asked. After the interview, the data was transcribed and analyzed with NVivo-computer software, which is a helpful software program developed specifically for the qualitative research. The early coding gave a guideline to the next interview round. Each discussion was significant to the continuum of the study, due to the fact that from the rising themes, the interviewer was able to make new questions focusing on the matters the earlier interviewee had mentioned. The presented queries or themes arose from the previous interviews for example in this way: “Some people have mentioned that colleague’s mood catches, what is your experience about this?” In the grounded theory –method, it is important that the interviewer does not interfere the interviewee’s answers in any ways. None of the interviews had any specific structure even if, as said, there were some main discussion topics, taken from the previous discussions. Often the employees talked about the themes already discovered in the previous interviews, without asking to. This proved that the same matters affected many of the workers. In the end of each interview, the team member was asked to write a diary about the subject “emotions and mood”. This way the interviewee got a chance to write down matters she might have forgotten to talk about. It also seemed to be easier for some people to write down their thoughts, instead of talking about them. The diary had a free content and some persons wrote about their working days for one specific week, when some wrote freely about their ideas, which had arisen after the interview. The interviewees talked openly about their emotions and mood, and when the conversations ended, the researcher had a really rich content. Already at this point, certain themes began to arise, especially when it was noticed that the interviews concentrated mainly on the same matters, even without a real guidance and even in the comparison between two different teams. 27 The final part of the research was the group discussions, which were held separately with each group after the results were found. Here, people had the possibility to exchange thoughts about the results together. The group discussions gave important background information for the whole study. After this session, each person was asked, once more, to write their ideas about the matters and the suggestions of the possible uses of the research in general. The expressed opinions and the contribution of the research will be presented later in the last chapter. It was central for the investigator to keep a research journal from where it was noticeable the different emotions that arose after every interview. The researcher’s own annotations proved to have a great meaning to understand better the study. It was interesting to see how also the researcher’s moods and emotions changed throughout the process. 3.5 Data analysis All the interviews were recoded with the approval of the interviewees. The duration of the 14 interviews were from 15 minutes to 57 minutes. In the end there were eight and a half hours of recorded material. The interviews were stopped after it could be seen that the issues started to repeat themselves, meaning that the point of saturation was achieved. All of the interviews and the analysis were conducted by the researcher herself. From the 14 interviews, five were carried out in English and the rest in Finnish but all the interviews were transcribed in Finnish. Grounded theory method recommends practicing selective transcription (Strauss & Corbin 1990:30) but it was seen important to transcribe all the interviews from word to word with expressions to understand the emotions also between the lines. The coding with NVivo -program was a multi-level procedure that was living and changing during the whole process. First, each interview was roughly coded into various categories, main tree nodes, based on their contents. This coding gave also guidelines for the following interviews. After the preliminary open coding, when the interviews were almost finished, a more particular coding was performed. 28 In the next phase, the tree nodes were gone through more carefully and more nodes were formed. After the first accurate coding there were about 20 different nodes. At this point of the analysis, certain entities started to arise and deeper meanings were found. It could be seen that all the nodes could be divided into three larger spectrums: intrapersonal, interpersonal and organizational and therefore, each of the smaller nodes were set under a larger node. After the rearrangement of the nodes, it could be discovered that the answers had mainly a positive, negative or a neutral tone. The case being this, the already existing nodes were coded once more under three different nodes: positive, negative or neutral. This step was called the going on -coding. The going on -coding means that a previously coded piece of an interview is coded on again, to another category. The three nodes were rearranged three times before the final results. The third arrangement was made when the positive, negative or neutral nodes were coded on once more to their sub-nodes based on what caused the response attitude. In total, the analyzing of the data was challenging because of the unique characteristics of the interviews. During the carry out of the grounded theory, the analysis can seem to be an endless process, because new findings arise more questions and this happens continuously. One of the challenges for this research was to know when to stop the analyzing. The idea that the interviews could be endlessly coded, every time a bit more carefully, had to be buried or the thesis would have never been ready. 29 4. THE RESULTS This chapter will present the empirical findings of the interviews that were gathered by following the structure of grounded theory –method. It is characteristic to grounded theory –method that the data collection and the analyzing are done without leaning to previous studies. The attempt trying to combine the main results with the existing literature into a common framework, will be done after the analysis in chapter five. Each interview was unique and consisted of multiple elements containing a great amount of information about matters that affect person’s emotions and mood at the working place, more specifically in the working group. What had an influence and to which extend was rather personal, but in the end several prevailing systems came up answering the main research questions. What affected the majority’s mood and emotions in the exclusive surroundings of work and how did it show? In the following sub-chapters the different factors will be discussed more carefully. Firstly, the main six themes will be presented. After discovering the most common areas, it came apparent that the themes could be divided into three different areas: intrapersonal, interpersonal and organizational. Each arena will be taken into a closer examination. The ways how each one of the respondents reacted to the different occurrences, will be presented afterwards. In the end of the chapter, a comparison between the Foreign Group and the Domestic Group is made and quotations from the research’s own research diary will be uncovered. Already at this point it should be notified how important it is to understand the dissimilarity of people. Each individual has different emotions and way of seeing the world. What made the research challenging was the diversity of people’s characters and therefore the diversity of their answers. What seemed to be significant to somebody could be worthless to someone else. This was acknowledged several times during the interviews when a number of respondents didn’t understand the suggested discussion theme at first because she might have never thought about the matter before. To some, the same topic could be very significant and they could go on talking about it for more than a few minutes. In the same way, some of them might have strong opinions on certain matters, whereas others might have a neutral opinion to the matter or even no judgment at all. That is why it should be remembered not to make 30 any generalizations about the individuals based on these results, and limit generalizations to the working groups. 4.1 The Themes In the final version of coding with the NVivo software there were 20 different sub- nodes under the three main nodes. To make the presentation of main results clearer, the 20 sub-nodes were merged into five common themes: emotions and mood, the group, social affect, the work, conflicts, superiors and feedback. Each one of them is now demonstrated separately. 4.1.1 Emotions and mood A common opinion was that emotions and mood have a huge effect on daily bases. Group members spent at least 7, 5 hours a day at work, and often extra hours with each other. When the time spent in the office was so great it was seen to be almost impossible that emotions would not matter also there. What happens at home follows the person to work even if there was an attempt to hide those feelings. Reasons, which caused the discrete emotions and varieties in moods and how they showed, differed a lot among individuals. Some people responded to impulses stronger than others. For some it was easier to express their sentiments, while others wanted to hide them, especially those with a negative tone. Each interview began so that interviewee was given the possibility to talk freely about the subject, emotions and mood at work. People focused in matters that affected them the most at that precise moment, talking openly about their emotions and mood and themselves as a person. The way people usually discussed the subject was indirect or the ‘true’ meanings of what they said could be noticed between the lines: “It feels good when…”, “it makes me feel bad when…” or ” I was happy/sad when…”. The interviewees explained how they try as a person to analyze why different elements affect them in the way they do. People revealed their wishes and hopes speaking about the happy events and or on the contrary about the sad ones. In the end there was a touching collection of life in the office. 31 I have noticed that it makes me happy when I can help others and the intercourse with them is going well. Female It makes me happy when I can laugh. Good joking is fun. Female The discussions dealt with many distinct emotions, such as joy, sadness and fear. Interviewees shared their hopes; what they wanted to accomplish in life, what made them angry and what gave them happiness. There were signs of disappointments but also sentiments of success. The elements from where these feelings originated varied a lot. For example, people who had a permanent working contract did not have the same insecurity than those who had a temporary contract. But even those who had the permanent working contract felt insecure on the behalf of their colleagues who were not sure if their working agreement was renewed. Of course it always affects extremely much, like now, when there is some uncertainty of colleague’s future employment. It influences the mood I have been in during the past few days. Female When discussing about moods and emotions it ended up to be surprisingly complicated to separate the two main concepts. They were often seen as each other’s synonyms and therefore, it was not even easy, even for the researcher herself, to make a clear difference between the two notions, while analyzing the interviews. In case of discussing the meaning of them, emotions were seen more stable and stronger than moods. Mood could be described as a derivative of emotions which showed outside and could change several times even during one day. Emotions were considered stronger and more personal, even hidden from others. They were thought to have different levels of intensity and the way they affected, appeared to others as moods. “Lately I have been happy and relaxed. I smile, I’m ok and I talk to people. But there has been a time when I was upset already in the morning. I woke up thinking why do I have to do this? It was horrible.” Male What caused the mood or had an effect on emotions, arose from the essentials that were important to the person herself. The most significant matters happened mainly outside the office, in the personal sphere. The interviewees suggested that their moods were usually good when coming to work but if something negative or on the contrary 32 something extremely positive influenced their personal life, it had a straight impact on their moods at work. A common and highly acceptable opinion was that everyone sometimes has a so called bad day, which can be a result from very assorted reasons. If a person came to work in a negative mood, it was claimed to have a huge effect on the whole day, although it was possible that the mood changed during the day. Despite of possible personal problems, people didn’t want to bring their problems and bad mood to work. Workers tried to hide the negative feelings because they knew that a bad mood could have an unfavorable effect on colleagues and on the whole team. “I have a mentality that even if I am sometimes sad, I should fight against it. So, I come to work with a nice face because other people will see it. If my face looks like you just walked over it with your shoes on, it’s not so nice to see and it can also affect other people. And believe me, especially lately, I have cried every damn morning when I have woken up and seen the weather: it’s like night.” Female Many of the interviewees proposed that personal life did not belong to the office. The problem related to this matter, was that people have very dissimilar requests. Some interviewees didn’t want to share anything from their personal lives in the office when others shared their private lives quite openly. For more open people it was hard to understand why some others didn’t want to share something from their lives and they wished to know more about their colleagues. Difficulties Talking about personal emotions and mood was difficult for many reasons. People were introduced with the interview topic beforehand but despite of the possibility to think about the subject beforehand at home, it was not easy to talk about these issues. Emotions and mood are very personal issues and some interviewees were afraid that the discussion would go to the ears of their superiors, whereas others simply didn’t like to talk about their emotions to a stranger, even if the interviewer was working in the same department. The subject was also seen to be so wide that it was hard to start talking about it. For many, the answering was problematic because the subject was free and no precise questions were made. People were concerned whether they were answering the 33 questions in a right way; the way they were expected to. This was even when the respondent was told that no expectations were made in advance. Some interviewees simply didn’t like the situation and they said to feel as they were in a job interview or analyzed by a psychologist. Another explanation why talking about emotions and mood was seen difficult, was the fact that they actually change, even quite rapidly. Many claimed that their moods could change many times during one day and the colleagues, with whom one interacts the most with, had the biggest influence in which direction the mood turned. How the mood changed during one week could be seen from the diaries, where some interviewees wrote about their working days of one specific week. “What I feel changes rapidly. Sometimes I feel really good and sometimes really bad. Sometimes I would just want quit everything and disappear. Sometimes I hate somebody and sometimes I think he is a great person. It changes constantly.” “It's difficult to write about this topic, as I already said during the interview, mainly because my feelings and mood are changing continuously, even during the same day. “ Quote from a diary -- Male On the contrary, some started to talk with a great excitement and went on several minutes without interruptions. Even with some possible difficulties in the beginning, after a while, the interviewees didn’t want to stop talking and in the end they felt they might have forgotten to say something. The fact that the respondents were given the opportunity to write a diary after the interviews, seemed to help some people to open up. This also proved that it is favorable that people are given various options how to express themselves because everybody is different and therefore has different ways to express their thoughts. Concentration It was easy to see how the discussions concentrated on highly topical issues, matters which were happening at that precise moment. The level of their influence could be seen in some of the interviews, when the person realized after 20 minutes that she had been talking only about topics that had occupied her thoughts at that moment, ignoring all other areas. More or less, it can be assumed that current issues change with time. 34 That’s why it would have been interesting to do a second interview round after some time, to see whether the content of interviews changes. “At this moment I don’t have anything else in my mind because yesterday we had this discussion with my colleagues and I don’t know what they think because we haven’t talked about it. So, I just think about that.” Male The way people saw themselves was another popular subject. When they were given a possibility to open up, a natural tendency for people was to talk about themselves. Many sentences started with: “I am… I am not so… I would like to be… I wish I was… When I’m sad / happy I… Usually I am… I try to… Lately I have been… My problem is…” How the sentences continued varied greatly, having both positive and negative contents. Which aspects had negative or positive tone will be discussed more carefully in the upcoming sub-chapters. In the very end, the interviewees were happy that they had opened up and even talked about difficult things. They were glad somebody had listened to them and that the subject had made them think about the different areas at work and their own role in the combination. “It felt incredibly good to talk about everything and get a chance to open up.” Quote from a diary -Female 4.1.2 Social effect “Emotions change and vary a lot with different colleagues” Female Social effect could be divided into intercourse with the group and intercourse with the other workers in the department. While working in groups, the members spent most of the time sitting close to each other, sharing ideas, successes and, of course, problems and complains. Therefore it was natural that the most popular interview theme was the group concept and the individuals working in it. Sentiments towards the closest colleagues varied and they formed a popular area of conversation. 35 The relationships individuals created at work were seen vital. The important connections, in this case, were provided by the formal team, friendships with another person in the team or outside the team or a group of people that had something in common, such as the language. To some, the affairs created at work could be the biggest reason to enjoy working. “I really like our team a lot. I guess that is the biggest reason why it is so nice to come to work.” Female What affected mainly in both groups, was the way the employees influenced each others with their behavior and attitudes. Another thing that had an effect was the work contribution that the group members gave to the team. Mainly the group was seen as a comforting “safety net”, where one could trust to receive help in work related issues. Interviewees felt that they could also share their personal problems with certain colleagues. However, this last issue will not be contemplated here. From time to time the job was regarded as stressful, whereas group’s common meetings, lunches and coffee breaks were seen to give extra power. When the work related distress could be discharged to other group members, it was seen as a source of strength to move on. “There are days when you are about to burst out and cry when nothing seems to work. […] It helps to know that we have that kind of a team where you can complain about the things bothering you. You don’t have to think about them only inside your head when you can say it out loud.” Female It was characteristic to the working society that there seemed to be a silent acceptance of norms how one was expected to behave. It was widely understood that one could not behave as she would have liked. Instead, employees tried to hide their sentiments, especially the negative ones. On the other hand, hiding negative emotions was not unambiguous. The feelings often showed to others, despite of the fact that people tried to keep them aside. Workers’ moods had a significant affect also to the humour of others and when it came to the negative ones, it was acknowledged to have a real effect on the surroundings. 36 “You have to behave in a certain way and you can’t show everything you want. You just have to manage the situation thinking that this is not fun but let’s just try to act normal in this situation. Male “You know yourself, how bad day you have, but how does it show to others? Are you able to hide it when sometimes you feel that it shows 100 km away?” Female Hiding true feelings could lead to a situation where everything seemed to be alright when looking from the outside but the truth could be something else. People are easily pretending to be happy and content even if they might not be. This matter will be examined closed in subchapter 4.1.4 Conflicts. Mood’s contagiousness How the group functioned depended on the relationships inside the team, but also on a factor that can be called as “group mood”. As already mentioned above, when people work close to each other, their behaviour and mood seemed to have a big influence on each other’s humour. It was seen as a matter of fact indeed, that working together as a team and moreover, the behaviour of each member, how everyone acts and what it said, had a great influence not only on the personal relationship, but on the work itself. In fact, for some of them it was easy to name which member of the team had a positive effect on them and again whose behaviour affected the opposite way. “Of course emotions and mood affect a lot in the balance of the team. If there is even one person, who is in a bad mood all the time it reflects to the others. I think that emotions affect in everything at work. It is comprehensive how it affects. “ Female Mood had a big influence to the whole group, especially the mood of the people sitting the closest. An interesting matter was that although some said they didn’t want to bring their negative mood and feelings to work, the feelings automatically showed outside. For many, sentiments and moods were significant impulses, while, few also stated that their mood hardly changed from the one they woke up with in the morning. 37 People claimed to sense well if someone in the group was sad or had a bad day. Anyhow, at working place one’s privacy was being highly respected and for this reason the person having a so called bad day was usually left alone with her thoughts. Even avoidance was one of the ways, how the people responded to a colleague’s bad mood. “You come to work with a specific mood and already the first people you meet can change the mood into a better or worse one.” Female How intensively the negative mood affected others, varied according to how well the team members knew each other. A common opinion was that relationships would be easier if the employees would know more about their colleagues. In those rare cases when the reason behind negative mood was known, it could be understood through certain non-conventional behaviours. Interviewees said to acknowledge that everybody sometimes has bad days. However, many got still distracted from others’ negativity. “You can never know what affects the person in the background. We don’t know each other so well that we could ask something like, “hey what is wrong”. At least I don’t and nobody has asked me either.” Male “When people are mean to each other or in a bad mood it affects. If it's someone far away of course it doesn’t matter but if you ask someone something and they have a bad attitude already in the beginning, then I just don’t talk to them.” Female So, people understood that they should hide the negative feelings when they have a bad day or they are in a bad mood for some reason. The interviewees were aware that those sentiments might affect negatively also other members in their group. Nevertheless, an aspect which was not considered was the other kind of emotions and behavior they brought with them to the team, which might also have a negative tone. It seemed that individuals caused undesired effect in the team without knowing it. It was easy for people pin point how other members affected them and the group. On the other hand, it was impossible to see how they affected on others. Either they had never thought about it before or their ideas had been contradictory with the ones of the others. 38 “I’m good in seeing if somebody is in bad mood. What I don’t see is, whether I have done something to cause it.” Male Someone could see herself as a positive person but the opinion of others could be the opposite. If a negative mood had a negative effect on the moods of the others, the positive attitude naturally had a delightful effect on others. But even this type of effect could not be seen by the person herself. One person thought she didn’t have any kind of influence on the other team members, whereas the group would see her as a very positive person. “In the mornings, Sara (name changed) comes always with a big smile on her face.. It affects and makes you happier. She’s great. She is always in a great mood.” Female “I don’t think it needs sacrifices if you sometimes take your colleagues under a better consideration. Few words are enough, “hi, how are you?” At least it makes me happy.” Female There were only few who said at once that they know how to sway the group. While it was considered difficult or even impossible to see how one affected their colleagues, people admitted to be interested to know how they themselves influenced others because they could not see it. “Somehow I would like to know if something in me is bothering someone else, but then again, if someone tells you that, it hurts. But I guess it hurts more if people talk behind your back.” Female The different people The employees working in the team were very different. Some of them agreed that differences between personality, age, culture and gender built a good team, but that they also caused problems. Clearly this could also be seen in the way the interviewees responded in various themes. Answers related to even the most basic elements at work, such as team and superiors, differed greatly. Considereding that everyone is so different, they also acknowledged how important it was to be careful what they said: there was always a risk to hurt the other person. The 39 opinion was again that you don’t know what the person has on the background until you know her. Interesting male-opinion was that sometimes men have to be careful with women because the rougher “male-sense of humour” can upset the opposite sex unconsciously. Table 4. The Various Answers THEME POSITIVE NEGATIVE Superiors “Our bosses are great” “You can always go to them when you have problems.” “I don’t feel them” “There is no authority” The Team “We have the best team” “I think we are doing good” “There is no team” “People don’t get along” Table 4 is only an example, but it shows perfectly the great variety there was between people’s answers. When someone saw the team as a reason to come to work, another stated that the whole team concept was pushed too far. All the reactions varied so significantly among the persons that it gave an extra challenge to find generalizations from the research; what is common for the whole group and not just for one individual. How individuals replied to different matters was also due to culture. In the Foreign group, where members came from four different countries, culture comparisons were made. People thought that it was easier for Mediterranean’s to open up and say if something bothered their mind. In Finland, dealing with negative emotions was considered different. People from different cultures have different languages, different sense of humour and even different ways of working. Therefore they can also feel bigger connection to each other. Interviewees agreed that cultural clashes and conflicts did happen but with time, members understood better each other and the situations got easier. 40 “We are from many cultures and we speak several different languages. We have had very serious communication problems. Somebody says something and the other gets greatly offended, when she doesn’t understand what the other person means. It is obvious. But now we already know each other so well that it is no longer a problem.” Female Ultimately the meaning of culture was not a crucial reason when it came to differences. Often people make presumptions by talking about the Italians or about foreigners but it is important to remember that not even all of them think the same. For example, some foreigners did miss different elements from the organizations in their home countries, whereas some others stated that in Finland the way of leading was much better than in their home country. In this research the culture did not play a significant role, only the differences with personality mattered. Inside the team The company urged the teams to spend time together in shared lunches and team meetings. Spending time together with the group was seen as a positive change in working days but as usual, the comments had also a negative tone. First it was criticized that the team was not a natural concept. Those, who thought that private life and working life did not belong together, felt also uneasy about the idea of spending time with the group outside the office. People didn’t like to feel pushed to do something they didn’t feel comfortable to do and the feeling of been pushed to do something caused resistance. “I guess the idea of team lunches is good but I feel that those situations are unreal. You go to lunches because you are supposed to.” Female It was obvious that any kind of change caused negative feelings in both groups. A case, which obviously caused negativity inside the group, was the mobility of the members inside the department. It caused a feeling of instability. Especially the Domestic team had faced big changes in group elements. It was troublesome for example, when the team first organized birthdays together, a member switched to another team and therefore was not anymore welcomed to group gatherings and people were not even sure if the person should be invited or not. That states that group members create an emotional bonds with each others and changing a group can break the showing bond but not necessarily the emotional one. 41 “Somehow we knew that they were leaving, but then they just left. And all of a sudden you didn’t know if you should invite them or not [to team meetings and lunches]. Then we had team lunches and one came to ask “why didn’t you invite me”? He was kidding but I’m sure he was also half serious.” Female It was seen important to ask the ex-group members how they felt about changing the team. It actually caused an emotional dilemma when the old social structure stopped existing. They said it was weird to get to know new and different colleagues. The former group member of the Foreign team changed teams but remained at her old work station and was therefore still attached to the old team. What comes to the person’s own goals and wishes to succeed, changing a team was seen to as a positive thing. “First of all I can say changing a team has opened a new opportunity for me. […] I don't deny the fact that leaving the people, with whom I had developed a good relationship with, behind, as well as the old work I did, have caused some emotional dilemma.” Ex-member of a group, Male Challenges in the department Interviewees in the target company worked sitting close to each other in an open space office. Consequently, it is inevitable that everyone takes part in the lives of the colleagues around them. There were discussions about the lack of privacy or the level of noise but also about the richness of context that the people, of the many different cultures and backgrounds, bring into the organization. On the other hand, differences were also seen to form groups and set language barriers which were seen difficult to pass. Some felt that the working environment was too noisy due to many people and that caused negativity. “Silence...the harmonic atmosphere in which you can concentrate and do your job as you are supposed to do: right and calmly! Unfortunately, in my working place we miss this TREASURE!” Female For the majority, the noise or the environment itself was not a problem because people said to be accustomed to the working place and to the challenges it brought. Also the knowledge, about the coming working place related changes in the future, helped 42 employees to satisfy to the present situation. The noise had been discussed in the common meetings also before this study, one suggestion has been for instance that mobile phones should be kept silent during working hours, but interviewees stated it had not altered the situation. Working in an open space office was seen to be a bothering element because workers got involved in other people’s lives even if they did not want to and it was also seen to affect the concentration. “When you are booking invoices or solving problems you sometimes, at the same time, have to at the listen to somebody’s personal discussion about their personal lives. Why do I have to listen and participate in these discussions? Not directly but why do I have to listen when I’m not interested. At the moment I’m working. I have to concentrate and be careful when processing the invoices.” Male Friendship Some had friends at work and they considered it to be important to have somebody, who they could talk to and trust their personal matters. On the other hand, there were many who didn’t have friends in the office and they were strictly in an opinion that relationships belong outside it. Still everybody liked to have some contact and a talk with the colleague was considered to make the working day nicer. Interviewees found it revealing that there were colleagues from whom they got support if there happened to be problems or negative issues. Still these individuals were not seen as friends. The level, how one normally knew her colleagues, was rather superficial and could be described as knowing only “what was needed”, such as where they came from and who belonged to their families. Some people liked coming to work because of the work itself. Some other cared more about the social relationships that came with the work. For many of the interviewees, it was enough to know just a little about the person working with you and others would like to know a lot more. Even if there was no friendship, interviewees emphasized that it is really important for colleagues to help and to respect one another. One of them formed a new term of friendship at the office that was called “a work friend”. A Work friend is a person who knows a lot about you, but you don’t spend time with her outside the working life. 43 “We are here to work, not to make friends. They are not people who I would hang around in my free tim, I am with them only because of work. So they are not my friends. They are my colleagues.” Female 4.1.3 Conflicts As already hinted, both teams consisted of a great variety of people and that, according to the interviewees, can be seen as a rich element but it also causes difficulties. When there is a group of colleagues who spend a lot of time together, it is almost inevitable to fall into conflicts. Naturally conflicts have a negative influence on peoples’ mood, although someone claimed that conflicts are needed and they make the relationships stronger. In the interviewed teams, it could be noticed that there existed two different kinds of conflicts: the one between the members and the one related to the working as a team. It was also mentioned earlier that each working group had norms of their own, as well as a way to act and behave. In this study the “forbidden emotions” were the directly expressed negative feelings towards other people. Negative feelings against work or the current situation could be expressed even roughly, but negativity against others was expressed only indirectly. During the time the interviews of the Foreign group, a conflict could be noticed and it could be seen to affect everybody’s answers. As every current situation, also conflicts seem to have variable characteristics. Around the last interviews, the conflict started fade and people did not talk about it anymore. In the Domestic group the conflict was still on the way and the events and effects of it, could be read from the diaries. It would have been interesting to do another interview round a half a year later and see how the context changes. In both cases, it appeared that conflicts are a very delicate area. When the topic was brought forward in the group discussions, nobody was willing to talk about it, even when the group discussions were held several months after the first interviews, and obviously the conflict was forgotten by that time. In the fact, there had been a big conflict in the Foreign team that obviously had affected everybody. The fascinating part was that everybody had a different opinion on what the situation was at the moment of the interviews. Some members thought the 44 conflict was forgotten and some agreed the situation now being better, but they could not be sure of their answers. The reason for this seemed to be that there was never an open communication about the conflict. At work, the same kind of “rules” affects in conflicts as in personal matters. People try to hide their true feelings and to keep up the good atmosphere in the working place. Still everybody knows they exist. “Of course I can not think that everything is ok in my team. But there is an exceptional thing that happens in this company or with those people in our team. Even if everything is messed up and people are fighting, there is still such a good veil among us…I don’t want to use the word faking but there is a veil that hides a bit.” Female A person started to talk about a so called “veil of goodness” that hides the real “negative”. When the topic was presented in the later interviews, people agreed that it was necessary to have a kind of veil of goodness because you have to get along with your colleagues at work. The situation was usually so that the conflict was not discussed openly; it got solved through forgetting. As it was seen in the Foreign group, when there is a lack of communication, people have different opinions about the state of the conflict. As said, apart from individual problems, there are also group problems, which involve all the members of the team. A work related conflict could be a consequence of workload. People were complaining that there were not enough personnel resources and on the other hand, some other teams didn’t have as much work to do. The interviewed teams were the most employed in the department and the members considered it unfair that some people got the same salary by working less. Salary issue was not discussed in any other context than this. What seemed to happen, was that when there were two or three people working together, the cooperation went well. When there were more people doing the same job, the differences started to show. People felt that not everybody gave their full effort and that caused negative feelings towards other members. ”Some people don’t want to take responsibility and they are happy to do as little as possible. This again means that the people who are more active have to take more responsibility than they should bear. I would say that is the negative aspect of teamwork; the work is not split equally.” Female 45 Despite of the conflicts, a common opinion was that you should be able to take care of your job in every case, despite of divergences. Still, it was stated that the mood has significance at work. Communication in a conflict “People fake to be happy and satisfied, but when you talk alone with them you get a different opinion and you find out what they really think.” Female The lack of direct communication causes most of the negativity. In the cases of conflicts or problems, people would not face the counterpart of the problem but would rather keep the negative emotions inside or talk about it behind the person’s back. This happened, for example, in the situations where some group members thought that not everybody was giving their full effort. Instead of fronting the person about the issue, people talked to the team leader or other colleagues about it. The person, the negative thoughts were focused to, would sense that something is wrong and that she is not liked but could not tell why. The interesting phenomenon in a woman dominated organization is that through one way or another, the counter part would hear what a person thinks about her but with somebody else’s words. B C D S A Figure 2. The Communication in Conflicts (Situation 1). 46 This example could be from both of the studied groups. There is a conflict or negative feelings between counterparts A and B. A will not encounter B personally. In fact, she will rather keep the negative feelings inside or confide in C, who is another colleague or in S, who is the supervisor. Depending on the C’s character, C will keep the information to herself or confide in D. D can be the key player who eventually tells B how A feels about her. If C will not go forward with the information, it can be possible that B will never know what A has against her. This pattern affects negativity within the whole group. The real counterparts do not meet. Suggestions why the pattern forms comes out to be like this is difficult to make, but one aspect can be proposed, which is the earlier presented veil of goodness. The counterparts wear “masks” to prevent the revealing of their true feelings. “I think that others’ moods affect your work even if they have nothing against you. Every time when I hear them talk I’m like damn…what’s going on now. Are they fighting or gossiping about others? “ Male In this process, both counterparts A and B try to hide their negative feelings but the situation is noticed in both teams. Everybody knows the conflict is present and each member had a different idea about the current situation. Even A and B have different ideas what the situation is. The conflict will fade away with time without discussing. D ? A C B Figure 3. The Communication in Conflicts (Situation 2) 47 “I don’t understand the situation. I feel that I’m doing something wrong…What do I do wrong?” - Member A In another situation (Figure 3) the groups’ negative feelings are directed to a single person A, but the member in question does not understand what is going on or why the situation is like this. Despite of the negative feelings, all try to keep the positive mask on, even the person, who is the target of the negative sentiments. When the circumstances were not discussed together with a group, it bothered everybody’s mind and members said that the intense situation had also lead to a fight during a working day. 4.1.4 The Work “When the whole team has a right attitude towards working, it gives an extra kick to do more” Male It was obvious that the work itself had a huge impact on interviewees. As a matter of fact, it was considered essential that people liked what they did. It was seen to be more important than the relationships that people had in the team. As so many interviewees stated, “we are here to do our work good. That is what we are paid for”. In the end, the connections that the team gave were seen to be a helping source in doing the work better and more effectively. “I have pretty positive feelings towards this work because I could not do this otherwise…Maybe it is so because of my personality, because I am precise and I want to do things well, with a certain pattern.” Female The job in the company is processing invoices for the different units in the company. The work has a special characteristic because there is nor a start or an end. This was seen to cause a challenge with motivation and managing the work. ”Somehow this workload is frustrating when you don’t see the end. This job is endless. You don’t have to see the end, but you should see at least some kind of results after a hard month.” Male 48 Despite of the job’s intricate nature, people seemed to pour the energy from different sources and everybody said to like their job very much. The opinions about the work were rather contradictory. Although some were complaining that the work is at times monotonous and every day was the same, everybody expressed the happiness to come to the office in the mornings. Many emphasized the importance of doing well the job they were given and the succeeding in it gave joy and was a source of motivation. Interviewees listed several other reasons why the specific job was suitable for them. “When I wake up in the morning I’m happy to go to work because I really like it.” Female “Sometimes I’m annoyed at work when I feel that I’m not so motivated. I get the feeling that, isn’t there anything else that I could do?[…]But it is only temporary and the power to do the job is found again somewhere.” Female When people work together as a group it brings an extra element to the surroundings. Earlier it was stated clearly that colleagues affect each others with their moods and through their behavior. Every time the work is done as a team, the way people perform and with which attitude they approach working, has a great influence to every member. As it was presented in Figure 3, negative feelings arose easily when someone was not seen to do his or her job as well as expected. “If we are supposed to be a team, everybody should work. Some people are just free riders. They are here because they have nothing else to do. It influences my mood in a negative way. When people don’t want to work, it makes me most angry.” Female Both teams were the most employed groups in the department. In both teams the work had been divided into three categories, which seemed to cause a challenge. Figure 4 shows how the group was internally divided into a three smaller groups. The whole group did services for the same customer company but in different ways. The tasks of the smaller groups could vary a lot from the others. The most problematic situation was for the person in the middle, who felt that she was alone between the two bigger groups. The amount of invoices for these persons smaller but they took longer time to process than the invoices of the other teams. 49 1 2 3 Figure 4. The work division of the group It could be noticed in both groups that when the amount of persons doing the task was two to three, there seemed to be no problem. When the amount of participants of the assignment arose, some of them felt that not everyone did the same amount of work. Neither of the group had had any specific meetings or talked about the matter and the lack of open communication affected the personal relationships of the different group members. It came out with strong opinions that emotions towards the work have a huge impact on how the people approach the whole working life. Everybody agreed that also the mood affected working. It did not mean that when a person was in a bad mood she worked worse than usual. As a matter of fact, for some employees the bad mood gave an extra push to put their anger on working. On the contrary, a very good mood could take the mind away from working issues, following the reasons why the mood was so excellent. The way mood influenced working, was very personal but the clear opinion was that the work needed to be done anyway, despite of the negative feelings or happenings. 4.1.5 Authority and feedback “I believe that emotions and mood at work can be largely controlled by the superiors.” Female In the organization in question, the superiors sat among the workers and that was seen as a positive statement, because the managers were able to be more present and available in case of necessity. They were also very looked upon and most of the interviewees felt that they could easily go and talk to them if they have something on 50 their mind. Although the superiors were seen in a “humane light”, their authority was appreciated and even expected. Although some of the employees could spent time outside the office with their managers, it was said not have any affect in the superior- subordinate relationships at work. “Although we have been out with our bosses it does not affect the relationships at work. I would do what she asks even if we have partied together. It is like an in-built quality that they are anyway our superiors. In Finland you even go to sauna together with your superiors.” Female Workers liked to talk about their leaders. Their actions were supported, but also criticized. People admitted that they needed authority. Workers agreed that without authority everybody would talk more and basically do what they wanted, and that would surely not be their job. It was surprising that employees missed and even demanded a stronger control from the superiors. Although it could be understood that the managers are busy, the demand to have more caring was obvious, as was thought that a job can not be done effectively without control. When it came to superiors, the cultural differences came clear. If there was a lack of control, foreign workers felt it more than the Finnish ones, essentially because they were used to stricter control and sense of power from their leaders. For some of them it was difficult to adjust to the Finnish way of management, but all the foreigners also agreed to prefer the more human way of leading. “We (Mediterranean people) need to feel that our superiors are more present. […] Sometimes I feel that they are not here. Even if we are there, they are not present.” Female “I like this system a lot. It is very different from what I have in my home country. In Italy superiors are like gods and you can not say anything against the god […] when the boss came to visit sometimes, everybody feared him.” Male Typical quality of a working society is that people talk about their superiors and speculate about their actions. It was seen that the way the mangers acted, had a big effect on the mood of the personnel. If workers saw their superior stressed, it could make also the employees nervous and insecure. However, mostly the leaders caused positive feelings in the interviewees. 51 If workers felt that some employee had been treated unfairly by the superior, the rumours about it spread and remained in the organization even after a long period of time and surely longer than a normal colleague-to-colleague rumour. Speculations seemed to be strongest when someone got fired. How true the beliefs are should be checked in further studies. Feedback I need to know that what I do is being looked after by someone. If I feel that no one cares, what makes the difference if I work properly or not? Male The effect the superiors have can be negative, because of the non-positive feedback or the totally lack of it. Employees wished to get more criticisms, advices and attention from their leaders. The arising dilemma was the question: whose job it is to give feedback? The superiors’, the team’s or the leaders’? If the answer is the last possibility, the problem remains unsolved, because the team leaders need as much support and consideration as does any other employee. On the other hand, workers understood that their superiors were busy and therefore unable to give the needed feedback. Still, there was a demand for it. The importance of feedback was for some even greater than the salary. “For me it’s very important that I know that I’m doing a good job that I get feedback, because I live from feedback. It is my fuel to work, otherwise I can stay home [...] I don’t work because of the salary, but because of the feedback. “ Female The topic “feedback” arose as one of the biggest issues in the group discussion of the Foreign group. The opinion was that it would be highly constructive to get both, positive and negative feedback, and learn from it. Interviewees thought that the lack of criticism was due to busy schedules and the fact that there are so many people working in the department. However, receiving feedback shared opinions once more. Some felt that they had received enough feedback, where others stated not having any feedback at all. One question remained in the interviews: whose job it is to give feedback? When a feedback came from a superior it was remembered for a long time. The affect of positive feedback was great and it gave motivation. 52 “Today I got a short email from my foreman saying that I did something well and it felt very good. From that small line I can find the missing motivation and keep on doing the best I can, also in the future.” Female “When our director came, I was like I know that I am nobody because I know that she is a big boss and I am not and it’s ok. I know I am in the lowest part of the pyramid and she is in the top but still I am in this pyramid. So when she came to talk to me I was not only a number, I was Katharine. “And we are thankful for what you are doing”. Only her…Only SHE told me something.” Female It was also understood that the lack of any type of feedback meant that everything was going well. Some older workers believed that throughout the years they had learned that there just was not to so much feedback, and therefore people should not expect it or take it personally if they don’t get it. Still for many, the lack of feedback caused insecurity and feelings of imprecation. “Sometimes I get insecure when I feel that that I’m not appreciated. It happens when nobody seems to be interested in what I do. It frustrates me and you don’t put the same kind of effort in what you do than you would usually put, when you don’t get this motivation. Maybe it’s a stupid thing, but in a way, I feel that I need some mental support, like someone saying that “what you do is good”, which makes you feel some kind of respect.” Male 4.2 The Concept After a careful examination of data, it was clear that the interviewees’ answers co