NEW BOOK (published by Edward Elgar)

EMANCIPATION through EMOTION REGULATION at work

by  Dirk Lindebaum

Video animation - Emancipation through at work

More information can be obtained from the publisher’s website by clicking on this link: http://www.e-elgar.com/shop/emancipation-through-emotion-regulation-at-work

 

 

Abstract

This book advocates the emancipation of emotion by enabling workers to regulate their emotions differently given emotional repression at work. Drawing on Critical Theory and Emotion Regulation, this book articulates two pathways to social control currently underexplored in management; one where the social functions of emotion are exploited, and one where the talk about emotion overrides its social function. While conducive to organizational control, workers may face adverse consequences as result of these pathways. The author illustrates the processes through which workers can start ‘seeing through’ the repression, and enlist specific emotion regulation strategies to emancipate themselves from it. Workers may use these strategies to buffer the adverse consequences of emotional repression in the short to medium-term. Yet, this book proposes that workers eventually may decide to change jobs in an attempt to remove themselves from the repression. If turnover frequency becomes unsustainable for organizations, it can potentially change the social structures that Critical Theory and its aim to emancipate is concerned with.

 

What others say about the book……

In today’s Western industrialized world, emotional regulation is usually taken to be a sine qua non.  In this book, however, Lindebaum challenges this assumption, asserting that our emotions are critical for individual achievement and wellbeing and that, rather than seeking to control our emotions, we need to “act with creativity, spontaneity, and autonomy.  Arguing from a critical management perspective, he makes a convincing case.  This is a book that will be of interest not only to researchers, but also to management practitioners and consultants.

Neal M. Ashkanasy (Professor of Management, The University of Queensland)

Whose business is emotions?  Your own?  Your workplace?  Your culture?   In this erudite book, Dirk Lindebaum steers through this fascinating territory to pinpoint the emotional traps that workers face and, importantly, how they may escape from them.  This well researched book helps us look at emotion with fresh eyes and offers important insights for scholars and students of emotion.

Stephen Fineman (Professor Emeritus, School of Management, University of Bath)

In the current surge of organizational theory research on emotions in organizations, Dirk Lindebaum’s book makes a unique and important contribution. He identifies and explores how workers’ emotions are being abused as a tool of social repression by our bosses. In bringing together Critical Theory and theory on emotion regulation, he stimulates us to see through the workings of managerial power, and in the same go offers ways to resist repressive emotional conditions in the workplace. A remarkable accomplishment that deserves to be read for both its theoretical insights and practical relevance!

Frank den Hond (Ehrnrooth Professor of Management and Organization, Hanken School of Economics) & Co-editor of Organization Studies

 

FIRST BOOK REVIEWs PUBLISHED

YIANNIS GABRIEL wrote a book review in Organization about the book. In his words,

“This is a passionate book which has grown out of the author’s different experiences of organizational injustices and oppressions in which emotions play a major part . . . “

To read more, please follow this link (subscription required unfortunately): http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1350508417714522

 

PAUL HARVEY wrote a book review in Academy of Management Learning and Education. As he observes,

By the end of the book, readers (at least those of us who study emotions) may suspect that Lindebaum has subjected them to some of the emotional manipulation he astutely describes. As an emotions researcher, I felt some guilt and shame for failing to see the power of emotions to control and oppress on the scale he describes. However, after moving past our own emotional reactions, I think most will agree that Lindebaum has done something quite profound with his book. As he notes in the book’s preface, sometimes “the cure for the pain is in the pain” (p. x). In this regard, he does a nice job of replacing guilt and shame with a sense of satisfaction that, perhaps in spite of ourselves, organizational scholars have made important progress toward solving a significant social problem through our research on emotional regulation“.

To read more, please follow this link (subscription required unfortunately): http://amle.aom.org/content/early/2017/07/27/amle.2017.0281.abstract