Leveraging Emotions for Successful Organisational Transformation
Organisations are going through significant change and strategic transformation in these dynamic times. However, emotions have often been under-leveraged in the process of strategic change management. This article explores how leaders and organisational routines can create appropriate collective emotions to achieve relevant objectives in their strategic transformation. Using a case study approach, this study identified that collective emotions formed are dependent on the type of affective events and the current emotion state of the team, including their ‘identity’ strength, and is mediated by the organisational processes of listening and addressing concerns and the historical learning of the team from similar experiences, and moderated by leader emotion management actions. This article outlines the key emotions of excitement, optimism, gratitude, interest, happiness, pride and dissatisfaction, which are necessary at different stages in the strategic transformation process, and the organisational routines and leader actions needed to build them.