Antecedents and Consequences of Emotions at Workplace: A Review and Research Agenda

Positive emotions of employees in an organization yield emotional reactions that influence commitment and individual performance, which contributes to organizational performance. This paper has reviewed existing literature in the field of emotions in workplace and identified various antecedent and outcome variables of emotions in organizational settings. A conceptual framework is proposed based on literature review to examine the relationships between the antecedent variables and emotions among employees. The antecedent variables include individual-level (social relations, role characteristics, Big Five personality factors), group-level (leadership, group emotions) and organization-level (HRM practices, organizational culture) variables. Also, consequent effects of emotions on outcome variables (job satisfaction, stress, work motivation, individual performance) have been appropriately established. For academics as well as top management of organizations, it is important to understand emotions of employees working in organizations. The antecedent factors of emotions can be suitably managed to increase positive emotions which will contribute to better organizational performance.