Exploring the activation dimension of affect in organizations: A focus on trait‐level activation, climate‐level activation, and work‐related outcomes

• Author: Hakan Ozcelik
• Date: 01 March 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2127
• Published date: 01 March 2017

Exploring the activation dimension of affect in

organizations: A focus on trait-level activation,

climate-level activation, and work-related

outcomes

HAKAN OZCELIK*

College of Business Administration, California State University, Sacramento, Sacramento,CA, USA

Summary This study explores the activation dimension of affect in organizations by focusing on both individual em-

ployees and their work climate. Drawing on affect research and demands-abilities fit perspective, I have de-

veloped a model predicting that climate-level activation would deplete employees’emotional resources and

trait-level action would function as an inner resource helping employees buffer themselves from their work

demands. The results of a cross-level study, conducted in a sample of 257 employees and their supervisors

within 40 work units across 11 organizations, supported all but one of the hypotheses. Employees whose

trait-level activation was lower than the activation level of their work climate experienced higher levels of

emotional exhaustion and thus were more likely to disengage from their work in forms of increased surface

acting with their coworkers and psychological withdrawal, and reduced affective commitment to and inten-

tion to remain in their organization. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: affect; emotion; trait; activation; climate; engagement; emotional exhaustion

A growing stream of research has revealed the role of affect in organizational life (Ashkanasy & Humphrey, 2011;

Barsade & Gibson, 2007). Affect is an overarching concept that covers a wide range of feelings including moods,

emotions, and dispositional traits (Russell, 1980). An important and yet unresolved issue in affect research has been

to more fully understand the structure of employees’affective experience in organizations (Seo, Feldman-Barrett, &

Jin, 2008). Arguably, the most predominant framework to analyze the structure of employees’affective experience

in organizations has been the circumplex model (Larsen & Diener, 1992; Russell, 1980), which includes two orthog-

onal dimensions defining a circular plot as shown in Figure 1. The horizontal axis in Figure 1 represents the “pleas-

antness”dimension, which refers to the valence or hedonic tone, and the vertical axis represents the “activation”

dimension, which refers to the level of energy, arousal, intensity, and the sense of mobilization inherent in the

affective experience.

Previous research in both psychology and neuropsychology has provided a preponderance of support for the

affective circumplex model by identifying pleasantness and activation as two conceptually and statistically distinct

dimensions of affect (Yik & Russell, 2001), with different neural systems (Heilman, 1997; Heller, 1993; Heller,

Nitschke, & Lindsay, 1997). It is also suggested that these two dimensions should be considered independently to

understand affect more clearly (Barrett & Russell, 1999; Kuppens, Tuerlinckx, Russell, & Feldman-Barrett,

2012). Taken together, these studies substantiate the validity of the pleasantness-activation framework in analyzing

affect.

Despite its theoretical appeal, the pleasantness-activation framework has received very little attention in organiza-

tional behavior research. Instead, researchers mostly employed an alternative interpretation of the circumplex model

*Correspondence to: Hakan Ozcelik, College of Business Administration, California State University, Sacramento, 6000 J Street, Sacramento, CA

95819-6088, USA. E-mail: ozcelikh@csus.edu

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 25 September 2014

Revised 21 June 2016, Accepted 01 July 2016

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 38, 351–371 (2017)

Published online 23 August 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2127

Research Article

by using the positive and negative affect schedule (PANAS) scale (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) that in cludes

the positive affectivity (PA) and negative affectivity (NA) dimensions (indicated by the dashed diagonal lines in

Figure 1). Myriad studies showed the relationship of PA and NA to such important outcomes as performance, com-

mitment, satisfaction, and intention for turnover (e.g., Brief, Butcher, & Roberson, 1995; Cropanzano, James, &

Konovsky, 1993; Isen, 2000; Isen & Baron, 1991).

The PA-NA framework, however, has also been criticized on the ground that the PANAS scale used in this per-

spective captures only the high PA (high pleasantness combined with high activation) and high NA (low pleasant-

ness combined with high activation) portions of the circumplex model, without focusing on the low PA and low NA

portions (Egloff, Schmukle, Burns, Kohlmann, & Hock, 2003; Feldman-Barrett & Russell, 1998; Huelsman, Furr, &

Nemanick, 2003; Larsen & Diener, 1992). Indeed, to address this issue, Watson, Wiese, Vaidya, and Tellegen

(1999) have suggested renaming the PA and NA dimensions as positive activation and negative activation. Subse-

quent research has maintained that the PANAS scale leaves a broad range of feeling states unexamined in organiza-

tional research (Seo et al., 2008) and that a specific focus on the activation dimension is needed to more fully

understand affective experience (Kuppens at al., 2012).

In light of the aforementioned discussion, this paper aims to extend the literature by exploring the activation

dimension of affect in organizations. At the individual level, this study analyzes whether and how the acti vation

dimension of an employee’s affective trait, that is, trait-level activation, relates to work outcomes. Previous research

in psychology found that, as a reflection of their stable disposition, some people are more active and alert, whereas

some others are on the lower end of the activation continuum (Larsen & Diener, 1985; Yik & Russell, 2001). We

know very little, however, about the role of this affective disposition in organizational life, which this paper pursues.

Previous studies have also found activation to be a major dimension describing the affective characteristics of

social environments (Mehrabian & Russell, 1974; Russell & Pratt, 1980; Russell & Ward, 1982; Wasserman, Rafaeli,

& Kluger, 2000), including work groups (Bartel & Saavedra, 2000a, 2000b). Thus, it can be suggested that th e acti-

vation level should also vary from one work climate to another. Drawing on the theoretical grounds of organizational

climate research (Schneider & Reichers, 1983), I conceptualize and measure the climate-level activation phenomenon

as the employees’shared perceptions of the activation level of their work environment to examine its work-related

outcomes. As such, this study addresses the call for more research to identify and quantify the affective dimensions

of climates in work settings (Ashkanasy, Wilderom, & Peterson, 2000; Ostroff, Kinicki, & Muhammad, 2013).

Figure 1. The circumplex model of affect: pleasantness-activation versus positive affectivity–negative affectivity (PA-NA)

frameworks (adapted from Larsen and Diener, 1992). PANAS, positive and negative affect schedule

352 H. OZCELIK

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 38, 351–371 (2017)

DOI: 10.1002/job