Anger in Organizations: Review and Future Directions

Abstract

Anger is an important emotion in the workplace and organizations are likely to generate situations prompting anger. This has led to a range of studies exploring the implications of anger for critical organizational phenomena including emotion norms, leadership, employee relations and satisfaction, workplace aggression, gender issues, and status. Despite the dramatic increase in scholarly attention over the last decade to understanding anger experience and expression in organizations, there exist few current reviews and little integration of this diverse literature. This review will summarize current work in this vital area, provide a framework for understanding and integrating this work, and propose themes for future research.