An exploration of the relationship between emotions and self-reported productivity over time.
Date
2011-04-05
Authors
Lam, Moranda
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Abstract
For many years, the importance of emotions has been underestimated in the workplace. This is because the workplace was believed to be a space that did not accommodate the expression of emotions. However, towards the end of the twentieth century, researchers became more interested in the role of emotions in the workplace, since it is said that people do not always work in an objective manner based on cold cognitive conditions. As a result, it has led to the development of various models and theories, one of which is the happy-productive worker hypothesis. The current study is based on this model. However, the approach to understanding this hypothesis in the current study is slightly different from how it has been traditionally assessed. The current study expanded the happiness construct to explore whether there is a relationship between arousal, pleasantness and self-reported productivity over time. Results from the current study were found to support the happy productive worker hypothesis, as a significant relationship was found between pleasantness and self-reported productivity. However, this relationship was only significant in the absence of the arousal dimension. This, therefore, indicates that arousal plays an important role in understanding emotions in relation to self-reported productivity in the workplace.
Furthermore, a repeated measures approach was used to observe within subject effects to assess for potential patterns. The relationship between emotions and self-reported productivity was only significant at specifically 10H00 and 12H00 and not at 16H00 and 19H00. This may be due to the low response rate for the 16H00 and 19H00 questionnaires. In addition, only slight changes were found in the change of emotions and self-reported productivity as separate constructs over time. It is also important to note that the data used in the study was somewhat skewed due to the biased age and cultural groups of the sample. Thus, this violates the assumption of normality. Consequently, these effects may have impacted on the findings and applicability of the results to alternative contexts. Thus, more research in this field is required.