Emotional Dynamics and Strategizing Processes: A Study of Strategic Conversations in Top Team Meetings

Abstract

An important but largely unexplored issue in the study of strategy‐as‐discourse is how emotion affects the discursive processes through which strategy is constructed. To address this question, this paper investigates displayed emotions in strategic conversations and explores how the emotional dynamics generated through these displays shape a top management team's strategizing. Using microethnography, we analyse conversations about ten strategic issues raised across seven top management team meetings and identify five different kinds of emotional dynamic, each associated with a different type of strategizing process. The emotional dynamics vary in the sorts of emotions displayed, their sequencing and overall form. The strategizing processes vary in how issues are proposed, discussed, and evaluated, and whether decisions are taken or postponed. We identify team relationship dynamics as a key mechanism linking emotional dynamics and strategizing processes, and issue urgency as another important influence.

Charting new territory for organizational ethnography

“…In extreme cases, collaborators in data analysis may not just use technology to enhance, but even to replace their personal presence in the field with accessing rich renditions such as videos (Armstrong & Curran, 2006;Liu & Maitlis, 2013), some of which may even have been captured from the participant's perspective in the absence of any ethnographer in the field (Lahlou, 1999(Lahlou, , 2011. The extent to which the latter studies subscribe to an ethnographic sense of "fieldwork" (Van Maanen, 2011) is debatable.…”

“…This option extends the benefits of team-based headwork outlined above to external data analysts. They can use rich video excerpts to validate original interpretations or, in the spirit of an "insider-outsider" approach to data analysis supplement an external perspective to further enhance the trustworthiness and credibility of emergent interpretations (Liu & Maitlis, 2013).…”

The power of PowerPoint: A visual perspective on meaning making in strategy

“…Studies on displayed emotions (Liu & Maitlis, 2014) and body language (Gylfe et al, 2016) have begun to demonstrate that interactions among strategy actors can have a visual dimension. These interactions can impact the strategy process by accentuating urgency (Liu & Maitlis, 2014) or enabling novel combinations of knowledge to emerge (Paroutis et al, 2015).…”

“…Studies on displayed emotions (Liu & Maitlis, 2014) and body language (Gylfe et al, 2016) have begun to demonstrate that interactions among strategy actors can have a visual dimension. These interactions can impact the strategy process by accentuating urgency (Liu & Maitlis, 2014) or enabling novel combinations of knowledge to emerge (Paroutis et al, 2015). From studies on visual organization more generally (Ray & Smith, 2011), we know that both words and visuals are performative, in different but complementary ways (Bell & Davison, 2013;Meyer et al, 2013).…”

Study on the Human Resource Management System in Innovative Enterprises

“…The domestic and foreign studies on the design of compensation systems have investigated the maturity of large and medium-sized enterprises and examined the problems in their compensation systems [13][14][15][16]. Each pay structure and model has certain advantages, disadvantages, and degrees of adaptability.…”