Managing Emotions in Organizations

This book offers a concise, informative and game-changing view on acquisitions for scholars and practitioners. Mergers and acquisitions are known to create substantial emotional turmoil, but this book presents a novel and unique view on how positive emotions can promote post-acquisition integration. The phenomenon is explored from multiple theoretical perspectives, including cognitive appraisal theory, socialization and identity, and the findings are based on rich empirical data, offering both thick contextualization and potential for transferability.

Positive emotions increase change receptiveness and engagement, highlighting the importance of creating positivity beyond alleviating negativity. Through engagement, positivity can also help improve performance. The real-world advice offered in this book is plain and easy to understand, presenting hands-on emotion management guidelines designed to ease organizational change. Dive in to discover how positive change management facilitates integration, how the merger syndrome can be overcome to build a harmonious coexistence and how to move from identity threats towards encouraging emotional identification.

Dr Riikka Harikkala-Laihinen is a Postdoctoral Researcher in International Business at the Turku School of Economics at the University of Turku, Finland and a Visiting Researcher at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom. Her areas of expertise include emotions in organizations, cross-border acquisitions, and cross-cultural management. Her current work centers on exploring the influence of employee emotions at work and rejuvenating theory on intercultural encounters.