Skip to main content
Article
How Does Employees’ Behavior Change How We Feel About their Organization? Transfer of Affective Impressions between Employees and Organizations
Social Science Research
  • Daniel Burton Shank, Missouri University of Science and Technology
  • Alexander Burns
Abstract

Stable impressions of how good, powerful, and active an organization is may be jointly shared with their employees, yet the impression produced by employees' behavior may be transferred back to the organization. Our first studies shows that stable impressions, or sentiments, of organizations (e.g., a library) are fairly similar to those of their employees (e.g., an employee of a library), with organizations viewed as more powerful and morally extreme than their employees. Our principal studies along with affect control theory simulations show how the impressions created by an employee's behavior toward a customer (e.g., an employee of a library shouts at a customer) transfer to the employee's organization. Affect control theory simulations predict the impressions of an organization as well as they predict impressions of the individual employee. Regression and classification analyses give support to impression transfer, with the most transfer occurring for evaluation impressions, and more so for transferring bad impressions rather than good ones. Therefore, this research shows how a single behavior by a rank-and-file employee can shape outsider's impressions of organizations and the potential for applying affect control theory predictions to impressions of organizations.

Department(s)
Psychological Science
Comments
Army Research Laboratory, Grant W911NF-14-2-0034
Keywords and Phrases
  • Affect,
  • Affect control theory,
  • Impressions,
  • Organizations,
  • Representatives,
  • Sentiments
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2023 Elsevier, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
7-1-2022
Publication Date
01 Jul 2022
PubMed ID
35659049
Citation Information
Daniel Burton Shank and Alexander Burns. "How Does Employees’ Behavior Change How We Feel About their Organization? Transfer of Affective Impressions between Employees and Organizations" Social Science Research Vol. 105 (2022) ISSN: 0049-089X
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/daniel-shank/48/