愤怒有度:领导表达愤怒情绪对领导绩效的影响

领导表达愤怒情绪一定不好吗?最近研究发现,领导表达愤怒情绪对领导绩效(任务绩效和关系绩效)存在积极影响与消极影响的不一致结论。文章尝试使用双阈限模型揭示领导的愤怒情绪产生积极影响或消极影响的边界条件。进一步明确领导表达愤怒情绪的阈限是影响领导绩效的关键因素,拓展了双阈限模型对领导愤怒情绪影响其领导绩效的理论解释。

The Double-edged Effect and Mechanism of displays of Anger by Leaders on Leadership Performance

Within organizations individuals are often subject to one or more of a plethora of emotions, of note is the relatively large effect size of negative emotions compared to others. Anger, the most frequent negative emotion experienced in the workplace, typically combined with an urge or change another person’s behavior. Leaders often use emotions to guide subordinates to act in the way they desire, sometimes this can entail the use of anger to meet the demands of a specific task or situation. Follower reactions to leaders' anger at work have a strong impact on whether organizational goals are accomplished or not. As such, leaders’ moods may ultimately impact their performance. In past years, Leadership anger is often thought to have an adverse effect on leadership performance. For example, leaders who express anger are thought to un-inspirational leaders. long-term expression of anger by leaders lead to the perception of tyranny by subordinates and they are judged to have lower leadership effectiveness. However, in recent years, more and more research shows that the expression of anger by leaders also has possible beneficial impacts on leadership performance. Social psychologists believe that leaders who more freely express anger are also more freely indulging in the privileges of their higher status and in turn are regarded as more capable by others. Managers believe that moderate and proper expression of anger is beneficial to leadership effectiveness. The expression of anger by leadership has an immediate effect on correcting subordinates' bad behavior. In some contexts, leadership anger may play a significant role in promoting employee performance. In summary, we suggest that anger has an adverse effect on its leadership performance, but may also have beneficial effects, that is, there is a "double-edged effect" of anger on leadership. This paper examines prior research on the effects of anger on leadership performance according to principles of the Performance-Maintenance(PM) theory. Researchers have come up with many different theoretical models to explain the negative effects of negative emotions in organizations, but they cannot provide explanations for the double-edged effects of the emotion of anger. While double-threshold model elaborates on the positive and negative effects of different kinds of anger expression in an organization. This paper applies the model's interpretation of the double-edged effect of anger emotions to situations in which leader’s express anger, focusing on the effects of expressing anger by leaders on their leadership performance. Furthermore, we discuss the implications of double-threshold model's interpretation of the double-edged effect within an organizational cultural context where the power distance is both either high or low, and in this way we present a relationship model diagram on the interplay between organizational culture and leader anger built upon the double-threshold model. Future studies may choose to focus on: (1) Identifying the possible moderating factors between the two main effects of the double-edged effect of leader anger; (2) Investigating the influence of leader anger on decision-making behavior.