Abstract
The aim of this paper is to explore how the mood of managers of small family owned firms influence oninvolvement from other family members, relations with business consultants, and the decision to maintainproduction. We randomly drew a sample of 90 dairy farmers who were visited and interviewed. First we did aqualitative analysis of the data and then we merged the interview data with a database showing who hadmaintained dairy farming six years after the interviews. Our results show that farmers in a happy mood get morehelp from the rest of the family in farming activities than farmers in a neutral or bad mood. Farmers in a badmood are less satisfied with the consultancy service than farmers in a happy or neutral mood. Six years after theinterview more farmers in a happy mood maintained dairy farming as compared to farmers in a neutral or badmood. Our findings are relevant to all managers of small family owned businesses.
Highlights
The experience of work is saturated with emotion, research has generally neglected the impact of everyday emotions on organizational life (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1995)
Our research reveals that only approximately 11 percent of the farmers are in a bad mood, and half of them are in a happy mode
The remaining are in a neutral mood
Summary
The experience of work is saturated with emotion, research has generally neglected the impact of everyday emotions on organizational life (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1995). Emotions are an integral and inseparable part of organizational life, and they can profoundly influence humans’ performances across a diverse range of tasks (Scwarz & Skurnik, 2003). We wanted to study the implications of different moods among managers drawing on case studies of Norwegian dairy farmers. We wanted to explore how different moods influence involvement from other family members in farming activities. We wanted to explore if farmers’ moods can explain why some farmers are more satisfied with the consultancy service than others, and whether moods influence farmers’ decision to maintain dairy farming. Unlike most previous studies we did not want to use experiments to explore the effects of mood on performance. To answer our research questions we selected a random sample of farmers all over Norway and conducted 90 in-depth interviews during farm visits
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