Affective Events Theory

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Introduction In the twentieth century, psychology began to change its focus from the study of cognition to affect. With correspondence to it, emotions and moods are more attached importance and attention in the field of organizational management (Briner, 1999). The organization is the environment full of emotions, which may be presented in the form of work attitude, job satisfaction, workplace behavior or organizational commitment. Events at work, such as the reward and punishment, will influence the working atmosphere of the organization and lead to employees’ emotional reactions. Especially with the rapid development of tertiary industry, employees’ emotional reactions brought about the increasing influence, not only directly affecting the business efficiency, but also indirectly affecting the image, brands and customer loyalty of enterprises. Therefore, when customer-oriented idea takes priority in management environment nowadays, the expressions of emotions and moods become part of organizational members’ important work. The employees who pay the physical strength and intelligence at work are also requested to display their emotions (Ashkanasy, 2002). Main Theory In 1996, Howard M. Weiss and Russell Cropanzano jointly contributed a paper titled Affective events theory: A theoretical discussion of the structure, causes, and consequences of affective experiences at work in Research in Organizational Behavior. They proposed affective events theory (AET) in the paper which outlined “a new framework for studying emotions, moods and job satisfaction at work (Wegge, 2006, p. 238)”. AET provides a model or “macrostructure” that correlates affective components to illustrate work behaviors (Weiss & Beal, 2005, p. 2). This model comprises work environment, work events, personal disposition, emotional reactions and the outcomes and explains that affective responses

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