Emotions and failure in academic life: Normalising the experience and building resilience

Abstract

While a wealth of evidence exists about failure in organisational settings and the emotions evoked by failure, researchers have paid less attention to failure and its related emotional consequences in academic life. Given that failure is often a cause of significant stress, which in turn can lead to damaging consequences, we argue that this is an issue deserving of greater consideration. In this article, we adopt Ashkanasy’s five-level model of emotion in organisations, and explore the potential role of emotions in academics’ experiences of failure at five levels: within-person, between-persons, interpersonal interactions, groups and teams (and leadership), and organisation-wide. In doing so, we draw on findings from scholarly literature, anecdotal evidence, and our own experiences as academics to build arguments. Following discussion of the model, we suggest how academics might begin to normalise the experience of failure in academia and to build resilience in the coming generations of young scholars.

A phenomenological research on the role of emotional orientation in academics professional lives

“…According to Amal (2018), higher education institutions, although they have existed for a long time in the past, are in constant change because they are the center of continuous research and innovation, and this state of constant change and transformation, the tension created by the fact that the managers of the organization are other academicians and lack of clear information about managerial processes may lead to negative emotions. According to Edwards and Ashkanasy (2018), it is possible to indicate that facts such as academics" research processes take a long time, they have difficulty in balancing work and life, and as a result of this process, they receive rejection responses for publication institutions, poor evaluation of teaching processes, poor feedback and generally insufficient job security are the initiators and enhancers of negative emotions of academicians. Besides, the negative emotions of faculty members can also be explained by the fact that universities generally provide competitive environments (Fischer et al, 2012), by the individual competitive personality traits required for success (Araújo et al, 2017) and by the fact that research topics generally contain stress load.…”

Chapter 12. “You’re Invited to the Rejection Party” and Other Strategies for Normalizing Rejection and Failure as Part of the Research Process

“…The first introduction to seeing failure as part of the academic process is the Mentor Path Presentation built off of national movements to acknowledge and normalize failure in academic careers, including the Failure C.V. (Edwards and Ashkanasy 2018;Hrala 2017;Herrera 2019). When students are first paired with a faculty mentor, they are asked to interview their mentor to find out how the mentor reached their current position, the unexpected twists and turns that the mentor may have encountered along the way, and the biggest challenges and obstacles that the mentor may have faced, and use other prompts to facilitate a dialog about the messiness of research and career paths in research.…”

Mental Health and Psychological Well-Being Among Management Students and Educators

“…Finally, we suggest that researchers need to identify the strategies and approaches that will enable us to address the problems experienced by faculty and students in business schools (cf. Edwards & Ashkanasy, 2018), and proactively promote wellness in academia. Major questions include the following: How can we create cultures in business schools that value and prioritize faculty wellness?…”