Interpersonal Emotion Regulation in the Workplace: A Conceptual and Operational Review and Future Research Agenda

• Date: 01 April 2018
• Author: Peter J. Jordan,Sandra A. Lawrence,Neal M. Ashkanasy,Ashlea C. Troth
• Published date: 01 April 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12144

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 20, 523–543 (2018)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12144

Interpersonal Emotion Regulation in the

Workplace: A Conceptual and Operational

Review and Future Research Agenda

Ashlea C. Troth, Sandra A. Lawrence, Peter J. Jordan and Neal M. Ashkanasy1

Griffith Business School, Griffith University, Nathan, Brisbane, QLD 4111, Australia, and 1UQ Business School,

The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia

Corresponding author email: a.troth@griffith.edu.au

Employees need to regulate their own emotions as well as the emotions of others to

enhance the quality of interactions with their colleagues. How well this is achievedhas

important outcomes for both employeesand the organizations in which they work. In the

field of organizational science, however, differing approaches have emerged regarding

the conceptualization and operationalization of emotion regulation (ER) particularly

in terms of interpersonal interactions. The present review examines contemporary the-

oretical perspectives of ER and its measurement with a viewto resolving the confusion

that currently exists around interpersonal ER in a workplace context. To understand

howthis field of researchhas developed so diversely,the authors begin by demonstrating

the influence of three major individual-level ER models on interpersonal-level ap-

proaches: (1) the ER process model; (2) emotional labor;and (3) emotional intelligence.

Moreover, to make sense of the range of interpersonal-level research underpinned

by these theories, the authors present a 2×2 categorization, developed by Zaki and

Williams (2013), which shows how workplace researchers have variously approached

interpersonal ER as an intrinsic vs. extrinsic process, with activation of either

response-dependent or response-independent categories. This categorization broadly

shows interpersonal ER theory used in work contexts tends to fall into four groupings

as: (1) a purely extrinsic process; (2) a differentiation of extrinsic interpersonal from

intrinsic individual ER; (3) co-occurring intrinsic and extrinsic interpersonal ER;

or (4) interpersonal coregulation. This paper also discusses the measurement of

interpersonal ER and concludes by highlighting emerging researchdirections.

Introduction

The important role of emotional regulation (ER) at

work (i.e. the experience and expression of emotions

determined by the activation of ER strategies, see

Gross and John 2003) is today reflected in a bur-

geoning literature on this topic (e.g. Cȏt´

eet al. 2008;

Gross 2015; Lawrence et al. 2011). Although ex-

tensive research has been conducted primarily at the

individual level of analysis, researchers today (e.g.

Cˆ

ot´

eet al. 2013; Kafetsios et al. 2014a,b; Little et al.

2012; Niven et al. 2012a,b; Zaki and Williams 2013)

This research is supported by an Australian Research Council

Discovery Grant: DP130102625.

are beginning to recognize the critical importance of

ER as an interpersonal phenomenon. In particular,

evidence is emerging that employees’ perceptions of

workplace events shape their emotional experiences

and expressions as well as the emotional experiences

and expressions of others (Grandey et al. 2013;

Lawrence et al. 2011).

Researchers have found that regulating emotions at

the individual level (i.e. strategies to aid employee’s

regulation of their own emotional experiences and

expressions) is linked to better-quality communica-

tion, physiological health, psychological well-being

and work performance (for reviews, see Grandey

et al. 2013; Lawrence et al. 2011; Mesmer-Magnus

et al. 2012; Webb et al. 2012). Findings also show

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524 A.C. Troth et al.

that regulating emotions at the interpersonal level

(i.e. using strategies to regulate the emotional expe-

riences and expressions of others or using others to

regulate own emotions) is linked to: higher customer

service quality and satisfaction and better negotiation

outcomes (see Cˆ

ot´

eet al. 2013); positive client affect

and higher perceptions of trust and friendship (Niven

et al. 2012a); and more positive perceptions of

friendship with colleagues (e.g. Niven et al. 2012b).

Despite these advances, researchers seem to have

significantly different ideas about what actually con-

stitutes ER (i.e. its conceptualization) and how to

measure it (i.e. its operationalization), especially

when it comes to interpersonal manifestations. In

workplace research in particular, ER has been con-

ceptualized in several ways at the interpersonal level;

and this is in part driven by the differentunder pinning

ideas researchers have drawn from individual-level

ER models (e.g. Butler and Randall 2013a; Gracia

and Ashkanasy 2014; Gross 1998; Humphrey et al.

2015; Williams 2007; Zaki and Williams 2013).

Emotional regulation has also been operationalized

in different ways at both the individual and interper-

sonal levels (e.g. Brotheridge and Lee 2003; Gross

and John 2003; Little et al. 2012; Niven et al. 2011)

with few attempts to align the operationalization of

ER strategies across levels(see Little et al. 2012 for an

exception). This alignment is important for multilevel

researchers to be able to partial out the variance at-

tributable to different levels of ER, and also to enable

direct comparisons between ER phenomena at differ-

ent levels (Chan 1998; Klein and Kozlowski 2000).

While recent significant theoretical reviews of the

ER literature include Cȏt´

e (2014), Grandey et al.

(2013), Gross (2013b, 2015) and Lawrence et al.

(2011), these all focus on ER at the individual level.

What we learn from this literature is that ER at this

level in workplace settings is conceptualized using

one of three theoretical perspectives: (1) Gross’s

(1998) ER process model (Gross 2013b, 2015); (2)

emotional labor (see Grandey et al. 2013; Humphrey

et al. 2015); or (3) Mayer and Salovey’s (1997) ability

model of emotional intelligence (EI: Cȏt´

e 2014).

These reviews also tend to focus on the common-

alities and differences of individual-level ER using

the Gross ER process and emotional labor models

(e.g. Gross 2013a; Hayward and Tuckey 2013;

Mikolajczak et al. 2009). In this regard, we found

only one review (Lawrenceet al. 2011) that looked at

all three individual-level perspectivesacross a variety

of disciplines. Other reviews have critiqued the lit-

erature on ER within the context of a larger research

goal (Mesmer-Magnus et al. (2012) and Webb et al.

(2012) as part of emotional labor and ER process

meta-analyses, respectively). Importantly, we were

unable to locate any reviews of work-related research

that examined ER at the interpersonal level from a

variety of theoretical perspectives. Understanding

interpersonal ER in a work setting is nonetheless

important, because the quality of working rela-

tionships are often developed over time through a

series of interactions, and interpersonal ER plays

a vital role in shaping the emotional tone of these

exchanges.

In response to this shortcoming, our review inte-

grates the extant research on workplace ER at the

individual and interpersonal levels with the aim to

improve our understanding of the phenomenon of in-

terpersonal ER. Our goal is therefore to show the ex-

tent to which individual-level approaches to ER have

influenced interpersonal-level approaches, and to ar-

ticulate the strengths and weaknesses of this trend

for future development in this field. Thus, the three

main approaches to workplace ER at the individual

level (i.e. the process model; emotional labor and

EI) are examined initially in this review, and sub-

sequently referenced throughout, to demonstrate the

critical role they have playedin underpinning the vast

majority of ways in which interpersonal ER has been

conceptualized and operationalized by workplace re-

searchers. While we acknowledge that these three

approaches are not the only ways that ER can be

examined in other contexts (e.g. close romantic rela-

tionships, Diamond and Hicks 2005; Kappas 2011;

Totenhagen et al. 2016), we contend that these three

frameworks have predominantly driven interpersonal

ER approaches in organizational settings.

As shown in Figure 1, based on Zaki and Williams

(2013), we also develop a 2×2 categorization

scheme to demonstrate two additional factors that

drive interpersonal ER distinctions in the workplace

literature. These factors are interpersonal ER (1)

as an intrinsic and/or extrinsic process, and (2) as

the activation of those strategies as either response-

dependent (depend on another person’s feedback) or

response-independent (does not require a response

from another person).

The first distinction we make is the extent to

which the target of a regulation attempt is intrinsic or

extrinsic (Gross 2013b; Zaki and Williams 2013). By

‘intrinsic’, we mean regulation in which individuals

use their ownresources to regulate their own emotions

(Gross 2013b). It can also refer to episodes where

individuals use social interactions with others to

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