Emotions at work within organizations

• Author: Fabrizio D'Aniello
• Position: Associate Professor in General and Social Pedagogy, Department of Education, Cultural Heritage and Tourism, University of Macerata (Italy)
• Pages: 9-16

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov

Series VII: Social Sciences • Law • Vol. 8 (57) No. 2 - 2015

EMOTIONS AT WORK

WITHIN ORGANIZATIONS

Fabrizio D’ANIELLO 1

Abstract: This article, written in consistency with the pedagogical

personalist perspective and following a critical-argumentative

methodological approach, aims at investigating some needs, problems and

emotional effects of organized work (paying prevalent attention to productive

organizations) and at highlighting the importance of workers’ emotional

training. Specifically, at first the article lingers on a criticism of the supposed

equivalence between the emergence of the emotional dimension and the

“psycho-welfarist deceit”, then focuses on the exigencies of psychological

presence, on the relational emotional dynamics and on the repercussions of

these emotional plots and other ones on the persons who work inside the

organizations and, finally, emphasizes the value, the goals and the modes of

an emotional training responding to the treated issues.

Key words: pedagogy of work, organizations, emotions, psychological

presence, emotional training.

1 Associate Professor in General and Social Pedagogy, Department of Education, Cultural Heritage and

Tourism, University of Macerata (Italy).

1. Introduction: rationality and

emotions

In line with the evolutionary trends and

with the predominant results of the

millenary debate concerning the nature of

the emotions and their repercussions on the

human behavior, which starts with Socratic

and Pre-Socratic philosophical thought

[17], also inside the organizations we have

witnessed for a long time the primacy

given to reason and the marginalization of

the emotional component. In particular, the

Weberian and, above all, Taylorist

representation of the organization have

considerably contributed to the support of

the dichotomy and the antagonism between

logos and pathos inside the workplace,

considering emotions to be hindrance

factors for the advance of the so-called

organizational rationality and,

consequently, to be elements to submit to

the control of the reason in order to

minimize their upsetting impact [4].

If it is true that E. Mayo [13], already

since 1927, and, after him, a sizable

number of psychologists have tried to give

dignity back to the emotional dimension by

opposing the reported trend, it is also true

that the substantial exploitation of the

studies ushered in by the former and the

unheard echo of the latter, together with

the reductive focalization on motivational

and professional satisfaction related

aspects, have almost left things unchanged

at least until the Eighties. Only from this

moment on, thanks to the initial and deep

transformations that have assailed the