This article sets out some of the tensions, dilemmas and possibilities for emotion research in organisations. It reviews different traditions that have informed emotion explorations, in particular the kinds of questions inspired by essentialist approaches – wedded to measurement and numbers – and interpretivist approaches, employing narrative means of knowing. Two recent developments – emotional intelligence and positive organisational psychology – illustrate some of the strengths and weaknesses of the different paradigms, as well as the pitfalls of overenthusiastic applications. The article concludes by making a case for the superiority of interpretive approaches in representing both the qualitative texture of emotion and its political contextualisation.
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Stephen Fineman (2005) studied this question.