Emotional practices: how masking negative emotions impacts the post‐acquisition integration process

• Published date: 01 March 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/smj.2729
• Author: Quy N. Huy,Natalia Vuori,Timo O. Vuori
• Date: 01 March 2018

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Emotional practices: how masking negative

emotions impacts the post-acquisition integration

process

Natalia Vuori

1

| Timo O. Vuori

2

| Quy N. Huy

3

1

Department of Management Studies, Aalto

University, Helsinki, Finland

2

Department of Industrial Engineering and

Management, and Department of Management

Studies, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland

3

INSEAD, Singapore, Singapore

Correspondence

Natalia Vuori, Department of Management

Studies, Aalto University, Lapuankatu 2, 00100

Helsinki, Finland.

Email: natalia.vuori@aalto.fi

Funding information

Foundation for Economic Education, Grant/Award

number: 8-4356

Research Summary: We conducted a real-time field study

of a post-acquisition integration process. We identified two

practices that contributed to integration failure. First, the

practice of masking negative emotions caused members of

both firms to perceive that the partner firm’smembers

were satisfied with the integration process, even though

they were not. These false perceptions of satisfaction

resulted in minimal corrective actions, the escalation of the

situation, and ultimately, integration failure. Second,

efficiency-driven communication practices used in inter-

firm communication exacerbated the effect of masking

negative emotions on false perceptions of satisfaction by

shielding both firms’members from the other firm’smem-

bers’spontaneous emotional reactions. Our research invites

scholars to consider more deeply the emotional conse-

quences of various common organizational practices.

Managerial Summary: Do you disagree with your

employee, manager, or business partner? Does this dis-

agreement make you annoyed or even angry? Yet, you

decide to mask your negative emotions and discuss the

disagreement with a neutral or happy face. Wrong. We

find that masking negative emotions in the work environ-

ment can prevent corrective actions, escalate disagree-

ment, and make people to develop long-lasting negative

sentiments toward the counterpart that ultimately result in

dysfunctional behaviors. Our findings further reveal that

commonly used organizational practices such as commu-

nicating via email may contribute to the deliberate mask-

ing of negative emotions. We suggest that managers

should carefully review if and how their organization’s

practices prevent or enable people to share their emotions

authentically to ensure timely corrective actions and pro-

active development of business operations.

Received: 21 July 2015 Revised: 9 July 2017 Accepted: 16 August 2017 Published on: 11 December 2017

DOI: 10.1002/smj.2729

Strat Mgmt J. 2018;39:859–893. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/smj Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 859

KEYWORDS

corrective actions, emotional expression, emotions,

post-acquisition integration, strategy-as-practice

1|INTRODUCTION

Mergers and acquisitions often fail to achieve the anticipated benefits because of difficulties during the

post-acquisition integration process (Graebner, Heimeriks, Huy, & Vaara, 2017). One possible reason for

this is that people feel negative emotions such as fear, anger, or anxiety during the integration (Empson,

2001; Graebner, 2004; Greenwood, Hinings, & Brown, 1994; Vaara, 2003). These negative emotions

cause detrimental individual-level outcomes such as job dissatisfaction (Schweiger & Denisi, 1991), turn-

over among top managers (Hambrick & Cannella, 1993), and decreased productivity (Marks & Mirvis,

1985, 2001). Negative emotions could also harm inter-organizational relations. For example, angry peo-

ple may develop thoughts such as “Idon’t want to work for some of those a—holes”(Greenwood et al.,

1994, p. 249), and the fear of exploitation and contamination reduces knowledge sharing with the partner

firm (Empson, 2001).

Although scholars have reported that felt negative emotions generally harm integration, research has

yet to investigate how members of combining firms express their negative emotions during the integra-

tion, and how such expressions influence the integration process and its outcomes (see Graebner et al.,

2017, for a review). Yet, research on settings other than the integration context suggests that emotional

expressions could be consequential for integration performance because they influence other organiza-

tional members’emotions and behaviors (Niedenthal & Brauer, 2012). For example, if people express

their negative emotions during a task conflict, those emotions can spread through emotional contagion;

this could make other participants more hostile, turning a constructive task conflict into a destructive

relationship conflict (Yang & Mossholder, 2004). However, the effects are not always that straightfor-

ward (Hareli & Rafaeli, 2008). For example, although showing negative emotions increases the risk of a

relationship conflict, people who hide them might receive less help from others (Coté, 2005). Hence, we

cannot draw straightforward implications to the integration context from the previous studies on emo-

tional expression. There is a need for a complementary theoretical perspective.

Scholars have recently suggested that many behaviors that are typically seen as manifestations of

individual-level psychological dynamics could be better understood through a practice lens (Whittington,

2006). That is, people’s emotional expressions in specific situations may not only reflect their own inner

psychological states and personal beliefs about appropriate expressions, but may also be manifestations

of practices that enable and constrain people in various ways (Jarzabkowski, 2008; Vaara & Whittington,

2012). As practices shape patterns of behavior, in both intended and unintended ways, they are likely to

influence important organizational processes and outcomes (Jarzabkowski, Kaplan, Seidl, & Whittington,

2016). Hence, a practice lens might allow us to better understand why people express their emotions the

way they do, and how emotional expressions influence organizational processes and outcomes.

Thus, we have conducted a longitudinal, real-time study of an integration process between two

firms. This setting allowed us to track both firms’members’emotions as they arose, the way they

expressed those emotions, and associated consequences.

860 VUORI ET AL.

Our research findings contribute to theory on the intersection of the strategic process of integra-

tion and strategy-as-practice. More precisely, we identify the practice of masking negative emo-

tions—that is, knowingly expressing faked neutral or positive emotions while actually feeling

negative emotions—as a way for managers of each firm to prevent their emerging negative emotions

from being noticed by the partner firm’s members. We describe how the initial positivity that char-

acterized the integration influenced the formation and use of this practice.

Elaborating this contribution, we specify the mechanism through which the practice of masking

negative emotions contributed to integration failure. We found that the central mechanism was not

emotional contagion (cf. Cornelissen, Mantere, & Vaara, 2014; Liu & Maitlis, 2014; Yang & Mos-

sholder, 2004), but the use of emotional expressions as cues about the other firm’s level of satisfac-

tion (see also Hareli & Rafaeli, 2008). Various task disagreements started causing situation specific

negative emotions among the members of both firms. However, the members of each firm mistak-

enly perceived that the partner firm’s members were satisfied with the integration process because

the latter masked their negative emotions. Consequently, they did not initiate corrective actions, and

thus, task disagreements persisted, which led both firms’members to experience even more

(masked) negative emotions. Over time, these ephemeral negative emotions accumulated into stable

negative sentiments toward the partner firm that elicited increasingly unilateral actions and contrib-

uted to integration failure.

Moreover, we found how efficiency-driven communication practices exacerbated the impact of

masking negative emotions by reducing direct exposure to the partner firm’s members’spontaneous

negative emotions. The consequence of these practices was that, as negative emotional cues were

not transmitted, false perceptions of satisfaction persisted. This finding contributes to the integration

and strategy-as-practice research by revealing unintended emotional consequences of common orga-

nizational communication practices (see also, Jarzabkowski et al., 2016; Whittington, 2006, 2007).

2|THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

2.1 |Emotions in the integration process

Negative emotions can harm post-acquisition integration in many ways (Graebner et al., 2017).

Therefore, previous research has suggested that actively addressing employees’emotions during

integration could be beneficial (Birkinshaw, Bresman, & Hakanson, 2000; Buono & Bowditch,

2003; Graebner, 2004; Ranft & Lord, 2002; Schweiger & Denisi, 1991; Schweiger, Ivancevich, &

Power, 1987).

1

Graebner (2004), for example, described how negative emotions are “analogous to

friction that can slow the acquired organization’s momentum”and how “mitigating actions

[to reduce negative emotions] are analogous to removing any friction that could impede the progress

[of the integration].”Similarly, Schweiger and Denisi (1991) noted that active communication is

needed to reduce the stress and uncertainty caused by integration.

Although integration studies that have highlighted the importance of addressing employees’

emotions seem to have implicitly assumed that managers were aware of other organizational

1

Consistent with other qualitative case studies in management research (e.g., Vuori & Huy, 2016), we define emotion following

Elfenbein (2007, p. 315) as a process that “begins with a focal individual who is exposed to an eliciting stimulus, registers the stimu-

lus for its meaning, and experiences a feeling state and physiological changes, with downstream consequences for attitudes, behaviors,

and cognitions, as well as facial expressions and other emotionally expressive cues.”Emotions can accumulate into more longer-

lasting moods (affective state without a target) and sentiments (affectively charged attitude toward a target) (Elfenbein, 2007; Čehajić-

Clancy, Goldenberg, Gross, & Halperin, 2016).

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