What creates energy in organizations?

MIT Sloan Management Review

Volumn 44, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 51-56

  Cross, Rob ^a   Baker, Wayne ^b   Parker, Andrew ^c  

^a UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN   (United States)

^c IBM   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 3042761893     PISSN: 7653697     EISSN: 1782155X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (9)

1. Energy is defined as "a type of positive affective arousal, which people can experience as emotion - short responses to specific events - or mood - longer-lasting affective states that need not be a response to a specific event." See R. Quinn and J. Dutton, "Coordination as Energy-in-Conversation: A Process Theory of Organizing," Academy of Management Review, in press. Related concepts in psychology and sociology include "energetic arousal" in
2. R.E. Thayer, "The Biopsychology of Mood and Arousal" (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)
3. and "emotional energy" in R. Collins, "Emotional Energy as the Common Denominator of Rational Action," Rationality and Society 5 (April 1993): 203-230.
4. The first group consisted of 125 consultants and managers in one office of a global strategy-consulting firm; the second was a group of 86 statisticians in a major credit-card organization; the third was a group of 101 engineers within a large petrochemical organization.
5. In all three organizations, the rating was a composite figure based on an aggregation of project evaluations and objective data from the previous year. The figures were not entirely consistent - each organization was concerned with different dimensions of performance in the annual evaluation process - but they were consistent as general appraisals of a person's performance. The evaluations were also separate from the person's perception of his or her own performance.
6. For example, see W.E. Baker, "Achieving Success Through Social Capital: Tapping the Hidden Resources in Your Personal and Business Networks" (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000);
7. R. Burt, "Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition" (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992);
8. M.T. Hansen, "The Search-Transfer Problem: The Role of Weak Ties in Sharing Knowledge Across Organization Subunits," Administrative Science Quarterly 44 (March 1999): 82-111;
9. R. Sparrowe, R.C. Liden, S.J. Wayne and M.L Kraimer, "Social Networks and the Performance of Individuals and Groups," Academy of Management Journal 44 (April 2001): 316-325.