Emotional Responses to the Speed, Frequency and Timing of Organizational Change

This article reports on a qualitative study which investigates the role of time in the emotions experienced during organizational change. Whereas much empirical research on emotions and time has been conducted in highly controlled experimental settings, this study discusses subjects’ emotional experiences during real-life change events related to three temporal dimensions: speed, frequency and timing. Three themes emerge from our findings: the relationship between time, major change and negative emotion; the relationship between time and perception of control; and other factors such as fairness, disposition and emotional intelligence. This study’s contribution is to focus specifically on time, emotion and change in real-world contexts, and to derive implications for managing change and for future research based on social theories recognizing time’s subjective nature.